Blue Cavern

What do we know of beaobduliaretutfabr0
Some pretty interesting items currently listed including a yellow judge and green astro

The astro smurf is a fake for sure because of wrong markings ( must be bully handetched) . And therefore I assume most of them are fakes too. The Herlikofen is also a fake. 100%
Stay away

Great to see we can share each other opinions about particular sellers on eBay.

I have never heard of this seller but too many 'rare ?' variations for my liking.

I was of the understanding that to be 100 percent sure, the green astro must be hand etched, not that they are *all* 100 percent hand etched? For example: Blue Jacket with red tie can either be hand etched or not (I refer to Martin's photo of his variations a while back where there were two: one hand cut and one not) Am I wrong here? Thanks for the heads up if so

Really leftfield question: are any of the bully painters still around? Would they do commissions?

Hi Nick,
yes, to our understanding the green jacket/yellow shoes Bully Astro only comes with the hand etched marking. All other markings with this colour variation are most certainly repaints/fakes.

Martin's blue jacket Bully with the 1978 marking is a strange one, but has the Bully muster marking, so will be a Bully in-house paint job. Also it comes with a lot of provenance. There are also the Schleich mold Astros which come with a blue jacket. We don't know when these were exactly produced or why... at least, I don't

Would there be any old Bully painters around to do a commission job for you? They'd probably be in their 70s by now. I'm presuming you would be asking them to paint you a green jacket Bully Astro? I cannot see why they would. Would they still have the paint after almost 50 years? Their first thought might be "why don't you do it", then "why do you want me to do it?" If they look into it they will see the value of the smurf and may feel that they are being used. The thing is these things mean a lot to us now, but most probably very little to them. It was just a job for them many years ago. The thing that makes these rare is not only that they were painted that way by a genuine Bully painter, but when they were painted. If it was done now it would't be an original production piece, just a repaint by an old Bully painter.

cheers, Tommo.

Great thanks Tommo

This seller is 10000% fake Nick

I understand the desire to get a rare one! I was like this for years.

From what I can gather, 99% of the coloured Bully astro's were made in 1975 and were probably given away at carnivals etc. They had to be a soft mold PVC which meant the Bully mark was "handgeritzt".

The blue one I got with the printed mold was direct from Bully via a dealer. I would not have bought it otherwise (and it had a B muster mark).

Start asking around the dealers:

Bernd Maier
Oli Krueger
Andy Utschig

I know Michelle Leyselle from Belgium got 4 of the green jacket many years ago and then sold them on.....

It will happen that someone will sell one, just hang in there

ALL the green jacket astro's on ebay are fake- it's the fault of the shitty Davide catalogue that this has happened, they should have qualified the markings

BW

Martin

Cheers Martin. Big Help.

Everyone I have today purchased a hand etched Smurfette, Cushion, Handstand and Harp player......now on a little hand etched buzz (all Bully) as don't think I actually have any or few.....
What a the more common ones to look out for other than these?

The Bully ones that I have listed that come with the hand etched marking are:

2.0003 Astro- various colour variations
2.0034 Smurfette- about 4 variations
2.0043 Digger
2.0232 Gargamel
2.0498 Johan
2.0499 Pewitt
2.0068 Kicker 2
2.0069 Jungle
2.0070 Harp
2.0072 Trumpet
2.0073 Cook
2.0083 Hammer
2.0084 Handstand- 2 colour variations
2.0085 Cushion
2.0086 Gift- 2 variations
2.0087 Axe
2.0088 Trecker

Cheers, Tommo

cheers Tommo. On the lookout for a Rollerskate at the moment....