Blue Cavern

A German smurf collector from Greven, Germany who ordered approximately seven series of the Hong Kong fakes we talked earlier on, is facing a hard trial now. Since the package was caught by the toll, he has to pay a fine of 250€. Furthermore, all fakes will be destoyed.
http://www.ndr.de/regional/niedersachse ... pf103.html

Interesting and weird that they care that much...but it could mean that Schleich is fixing to go after the Chinese fakes. Not sure how the international law works, so not sure if they can go after the fakers though

This is absurd , but probably would not have happened if the seller would not have described the content as "play house"

Lia

Not sure I agree, Lia....It actually makes sense to me if Schleich has notified customs (somebody must have or how would they know to even look for them, much less know how much the real ones are worth), since I bet they are losing a lot of money due those fakes being sold so cheaply.

You could be right Maureen, it`s remarkable, how well the custom people knew how to recognize fakes, they were well informed what to look at.

Lia

The only package I 'lost' was from Hong Kong several years ago, and was a set of seat belts pads with Smurfs embroidery. I guess it was not lost but caught by customs and then destroyed. I never had to pay any fees, however, maybe because the cost of them was about 5 dollars.
I have to say that in the last months I had several shipments from the US stopped by Italian customs and then relayed to me with the custom fee to be paid for.

I have heard the same happening with German customs...My grandmother sent her OWN stuff over to Germany and had to provide receipts for her OWN stuff..which she obviously no longer had since those things were quite old.

I don't think customs can destroy any merchandise without notifying you, Paolo, so I bet that particular package was really lost..or stolen

In general, I don't mind them cracking down on fake stuff..especially when they have reasons to believe the merchandise was bought to be resold again...which they probably did think on this case.

Over here you are allowed to buy/import fake stuff as long as it´s for private use and not resale.

Now, if these were 7 sets of the same smurfs, then I would say they´re definitely for resale, however if they´re 7 sets of different smurfs (Halloween, Anniversary, Indians, etc, as we can see in the pics) then maybe they were not meant for resale.
But I don´t know the German law in regards to import of fakes, so can´t comment more on that.

what I don't understand is why go after the buyer of items. alot of the fakes being sold on ebay are not listed as fakes and if you are not informed and know better why should you be punished for buying what is there. I don't understand either why ebay does not shut these listings down, if schleich or imps knows this is a problem then they can go after ebay for allowing the fakes sellers to sell so freely. Seems to me like they are trying to make a point with the wrong person