Shopping Mandarake and authenticity

I'd say Mandarake is one of the better places to buy legit second hand dolls because they do screen for legitimacy to some extent and many dolls come with boxes and papers included, also they take photos of everything included in the listing so you can easily cross-check. They usually provide a picture of a head plate or other similar markers that you can compare as well. If you're super worried, better go for something that comes in its original box. If a doll arrives that you are in doubt about, you can submit it to Ask the Moderators in here for help or post in a community that allows IDing like that.

I'd say overall, just keep a sharp eye when browsing and know when to ask for help in comparing or identifying if you have doubts I've had no problems buying from Mandarake and it's quite rare to stumble upon a sketchy listing.

 

"Overseas cast" is just their way of saying that it's from a company outside of Japan. It doesn't have anything to do with legitimacy or recasting.

 

If Mandarake does not even know doll's origin then there's no way they could confirm the doll's authenticity either. Does not mean it's fake necessarily but definitely something to be cautious of, you need to do your own due diligence. The fact that they accept items they know nothing about in the first place means you can't trust them to be experts regarding everything that they list. What might be a sign of a fake may vary based on the maker or doll itself and I second sharing images to Ask the Mods or fan groups of that maker on external sites since they will have more experience.

Edit to add it's not allowed to share here but I do see some sold listings of confirmed fakes on Manda. You can find quite a few pages of dolls listed as "unknown" "unknown maker" or "overseas cast" without any additional info about the doll, there are also some listings with question marks in the name. Which unfortunately you can't search for but you can take as some indication that they aren't quite sure what they have. If it's an overseas cast doll but they know what they have they will have more information like the maker and sculpt.

 

Thank you, this is what I meant when I mentioned “overseas cast”. Recasts don’t usually pop up there but there’s been several I suspected were not legit and they often had this in the listing title since they had nothing to go on for identification.

 

Mandarake is usually pretty good about verifying the legitimacy of products, but it's always good to be careful!