My List Of Top 5 Stores on AliExpress That Sell Fake Lego - October 2016

It's probably the number one question I get asked on my Facebook page (It's Not Lego) and on my blogs, "Who are the best Aliexpress sellers?".   Well, I can't say definitively who are the best sellers or stores on Aliexpress, but I can tell you which ones I personally have had positive experiences with.

I make anywhere between 5 to 10 purchases a month from AliExpress, and for the most part it takes about a month to two months for my orders to arrive in my country.   Hence, the reason why my blog post title lists the month of October 2016, these are the purchases I try to reconcile at this time which is the beginning of January 2017.

Typically if I haven't received my order after 5 or 6 weeks, I will contact the seller to inquire on the item shipment status.  At which point the seller will usually agree to extend Purchase Protection.   At the six to seven week interval mark, if I still haven't received my item, I will start the Dispute process.

The AliExpress Dispute process gives about one week between Buyer and Seller to sort out any issues.   If the item arrives before or during this period, I cancel the dispute and the money is released to the seller from the custody of Aliexpress.

Aliexpress will then take another week to review the disputed case and provide judgement if nothing has been resolved after one week.   At this point, a period of 2 months will have passed by the time AliExpress passes judgement.

If the item has not arrived and the tracking number is invalid or has not been updated since leaving China, usually Aliexpress will side with the buyer and the purchase cost plus shipping will be refunded to the buyer.  If Aliexpress can prove that the item was tracked to the receiving country, then you would not get your refund, because the seller fulfilled his obligations to send your item.

I will review my list of Aliexpress purchases at the end of each month and give you some idea which sellers show up consistently on my Top 5 Best Sellers list.  Maybe at the end of 2017, I will be able to create a Top Ten Best Sellers/Stores on AliExpress List.

In October 2016, I placed 10 purchase orders for bootleg and knockoff brick sets and minifigures.  At the time of this writing, I have successfully received 7 of those orders, with 3 orders still outstanding.
I have not yet raised any disputes for any October 2016 purchases yet, but if I don't get the remaining 3 orders next week, I will initiate my dispute process.

The criteria is pretty simple to make my Top 5 Stores list:

1.  offer a wide selection of bricksets and/or minifigures at decent prices
2.  be responsive to messages
3.  ship within a reasonable timeframe (for my country, that's one to two months)
4.  don't lie and say item shipped when it hasn't
5.  don't give me a bogus tracking number


So, for the month of October 2016, my top 5 sellers/stores (in no particular order) on Aliexpress were:

1.  Biscuit's ToyLand Store
2.  Toy World Store
3.  Big Cabbage
4. WAN MU XING Trading Co., Ltd Store
5. Hamtoys


Please note that my AliExpress experience may or may not differ from your own purchase experience.  I have no affiliation to Aliexpress nor the sellers or stores listed there.   Please do your own research and due diligence before making any purchases on AliExpress.

Aliexpress: Dargo 899 Super Heroes Minifigures Set

Happy New Year to one and all!  This is my first deal find in 2017.

This is a mixed Marvel and DC Super Heroes set of minifigures.  It is Dargo set 899 and comes with 12 assorted minifigures.  There are actually 6 sets of two minifigures each. The sets are 899A thru 899F.

Dargo 899A Batman vs. Killer Moth

Dargo 899B Spiderman vs Blue Beetle

Dargo 899C Batman vs. Scarecrow

Dargo 899D Katana vs. Captain Boomerang

Dargo 899E Doctor Strange vs. White Panther

Dargo 899F Ghost Rider vs. Hobgoblin

There's a few Aliexpress stores selling this item for roughly the same price, which is $4.99 USD. That works out to about $0.42 per minifigure.

Here's the link to one of the shops on Aliexpress where you can find the set:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Dargo-899-Super-Heroes-Scarecrow-Superman-Killer-Moth-Batman-Ghost-Rider-12pcs-lot-Building-Blocks-Minifigures/32768615387.html


Please remember that I cannot verify whether the seller is good or not. Use your own judgement and research before making any purchases.  I have no affiliation to Aliexpress or the sellers found there.

The Pros and Cons of Buying Fake Lego

You may or may not know that Lego is not the only building block company out there, despite it being the largest.  There are other legitimate competitors such as Mega Blocks, Sluban and Oxford brands who make building block sets using their own original designs.

There are also companies that create fake Lego building sets.  They make nearly identical copies or bootlegs of Lego building sets and mini figures.  Unless you inspected the sets closely, you would be hard pressed to tell them apart from the legitimate Lego sets.  What you will notice is the price difference between genuine Lego sets and the fake or bootleg Lego sets.  The knockoff Lego sets will usually cost between 50% to 75% cheaper than the original Lego item.

To make my point, let's take a look at a fairly recent Lego set, the Lego Star Wars Clone Turbo tank. The Lego set number is 75151.  In the United States, this 903 piece set retails for about $110 USD and in Canada, $140 CAD dollars.  Aliexpress.com is possibly the largest source of bootleg Lego on the Internet.

If you bought the fake Lego version off Aliexpress.com, it would only cost you $30 USD and that would come with free shipping to you, with no taxes.   Hard to believe?  Here's a screen shot I took from the actual Alexpress.com website.

The fake Lego set is produced by a brand called Lepin.  The Lepin version of the Star Wars Clone Turbo Tank is model 05031.  If you were to go onto the Aliepress.com website and search for Lepin 05031 you would find several listings identical to this one, all selling fake Lego versions of this building set.

The Lepin brand has virtually copied every successful Lego building set, including the very popular Star Wars and Ninja themes.  Other fake Lego brands include Enlighten, Bela, Sheng Yuan and Decool.   For Lego mini figure knockoffs, the newest bootleg brands are Xinh and Pogo surpassing the lead once held by Sheng Yuan and Decool.

You might be curious to know whether fake Lego brand bricks are identical to Lego and I can say that they are not.  They are very close in quality and clutch, but not 100%.   With the fake Lego sets, they are not always packaged in boxes. You might receive a set in a gray plastic bag with bubble wrapping.  This is how the bootleg manufacturers keep their prices so low.

Another way is that they do not send you the instruction manual and refer you to internet sets where you can view or download the instructions yourself.  Personally, I've always received the instruction manuals, but have heard of incidents where manuals were not included.

When you get the bootleg Legos and take them out of the packaging, you may or may not find that some pieces are damaged or missing.  The quality control of putting these sets together is a bit remiss and I've had situations where I've had some parts that are deformed or broken.  I've also received fake Lego sets with pieces missing.   In the case where this happens, and I'm unable to replace the missing piece, I will raise a dispute within Aliexpress.com.

Usually I will receive a credit to my purchase price to make up for the missing piece.   You could then use that credit to buy the missing part if available, either through Aliexpress or another brick parts source.  For example, I bought the Lepin Green Grocer model and it was missing one of the baseplates.   I raised a dispute with Aliexpress and received a refund of about $30.  I then repurchased the missing baseplate from another Aliexpress vendor for about $5.

Now regarding the bricks that come with the knockoff sets, you will find that many of the parts are scuffed and dirty.  This is pretty consistent with the Lepin brand.  Bela and Enlighten or not so bad.
A good tip is to wash the parts in hot soapy water, if possible.   That to me, is possibly the worst trade-off of buying fake or bootleg Lego over the genuine product.  This would be a major concern if buying these sets for children to play with.

I've been buying these sets for the past few months and I always make it a point to wash my hands after touching fake Legos.  I'm probably a bit anal or neurotic about it, but better safe than sorry.  Despite the aforementioned caveat, I still enjoy buying and building the fake Lego building sets, primarily because they offer an opportunity to acquire the sets at a very low price.  I could not afford to buy as many sets if I was purchasing the genuine Lego sets, even if with their regular discounts of about 20% off.

If you would like to see some of the fake Lego sets I have acquired, please take a look at my reviews on my other blog http://its-not-lego.blogspot.com.  I will mention if the build quality is bad or the bricks are bad.  If I don't mention it, then you can assume that the quality or clutch power of the bricks is satisfactory.

To summarize, you can pretty much find any Lego set in bootleg form, at a very low cost.   The only drawback is that about 10 to 20% of the time, you might run into the problem of missing or deformed pieces.  A further item of note, is that fake Lego pieces tend to be dirty and scuffed, so that would be a definite thing to consider.  Anyways, I hope this little unbiased write up will help you to decide whether or not fake Legos are something you are interested in purchasing.