Classic Makies on Ebay

Glad to hear about some cross-group posting!

I caved and made a kind of proxy facebook so I can at least keep up with SOME news (like being able to keep up with Angelesque for example), but boy do I hate the site. I am extremely hesitant to put any information on it because of how invasive it is in trying to map out your life and connections. I'm not really sure I could join any groups though, since there's no information on the account and I don't intend to put any on it.

I do also hope that things turn out okay, and that Alice can get them back if necessary.

My account is totally private I believe, so nobody SHOULD be able to see anything except my icon.
I left my old full facebook account a few years ago because some groups got really super nasty (they were mommy/baby groups so REALLY petty and bitchy) and my mental health was really suffering as a result.
I got angry about how isolated it made me feel, so I closed that account down and made myself a nice fresh new one to join doll groups and play games and ignore real life nastiness.
After a while I decided to start going by my real name again but after a recent run in with a crazy, I decided to go "incognito" again and went back to using my alter ego instead. I feel a little safer behind a fake name you know? because there's some real crazy folk on facebook and some really awful people.

I feel similar, definitely. For me it's more to do with the fact that I was still legally a child when Facebook came out. When I used to have a facebook, that meant I was constantly tagged in photographs of myself at school or at college, and in general as a child.

As a professional adult, I don't really want my childhood on show, and making my account private at the time didn't really seem like enough when not only did photos still link to me, but people kept adding new ones. It's a lot like having a past life everyone keeps trying to dredge up while you're busy actually trying to 
do something with the new life. Actually, that's exactly what Facebook is for me.

I may eventually have a facebook for myself that I run as a page, since I am aware of the business advantage of having a facebook, but... definitely not just yet. Too many bad associations.

I'm getting kind of off-topic though. XD I've joined some of the more open groups, and it's nice to be able to follow Carol from Angelesque so that I know what's going on/can keep an eye on what orders come in.

worth noting, looks like the crazy high bids have been retracted. The dolls are all back down to about £30

Seems the high bidder was privy to this news, likely a group member who was feeling sheepish about their extravagance heh. But I can understand why you wouldn't want to pay £200 for a potentially broken doll. We have no idea what condition these poor things are in, they're very much "sold as seen" so it's a gamble. They might be fixable, might be minor things like loose joints or broken eye mechs, could be really major print errors. They look ok in photos but who knows unless we handle em right?

I wonder why he hasn't put the other stuff up. Could he be stuck in a debate with Alice over it all?

I have my suspicions about that one high bidder that has suddenly withdrawn.  Especially when his/her eBay profile seemed to show a rather limited bidding history and then apparently only for items that were listed by "mr-integrate".

This whole situation is starting to "smell" extremely dicey to me!  

I'm not sure he should really, legally have any of that stuff in his possession, except for maybe a few boxes of misc.office supplies and equipment.  

I mean look at what he is selling!  Those are all the new, revised for IMs shoes, and the others are items from the brand new Career Sets!  

Why on earth would Alice abandon perfectly good, new merchandise items?!  Especially since she was only relocating not shutting down.

If it's so expensive to print up 3DP items, why would she authorize the sale of new marketable merchandise to a clearance agent for probably well below what it cost her to have it all printed?

I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that someone was supposed to be holding or storing all that stuff until Alice could arrange to have lot freighted over to the U.S.  

It looks to me like possibly "mister clearance agent" decided to help himself to a few extra boxes in addition to the ones he legitimately bought.  Either that, or someone who Alice believed was dependable, and whom she trusted to handle all the last little "odds and ends"  for her in the U.K., seriously screwed up!

Jeez, I don't even want to think about the possibility that said person might have deliberately sold boxes of stuff that they knew wasn't supposed to be sold.....just to "jack her up", and/or make a few quid.

It does seem a bit odd, but I don't know. We haven't got much info on it all right now. Really if Alice didn't want things sold she could let the facebook group know as the majority of those buying will be in that group.

Much like the bodies he claims to have, which I suspect are probably IM because if you think about it, we know the 3dp bodies were printed on demand so they wouldn't have "spare" ones but the IM bodies would need to be made in batches or cases like playline toys are, so would be delivered in a big box waiting for a head to be stuck on. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they had a few left over after christmas, but it does raise the question "why did't they take all these things with them?"
I understand not taking the old dolls, they just take up space and aren't usable for anything now, but accessories and bodies? Wigs? Eyes? All these things would be needed surely?

It's all very very odd.

I do hope it gets sorted, but I wish Alice would communicate what was going on so we all knew if it was ok to bid or not.

Something was said last night to the effect that he has bought these legit and Alice can't get him to pull the listings .I think IF she is starting up again over there she is going to start from a clean slate so to speak tho I agree it would have made more sense to store the stuff then get it sent over when she was ready to reopen or even reopen over there with what stock she had ready just to keep things ticking over .
As for the high bidder - there are 3 possibilities : a real person bidding to hike the price so their own stuff can be sold high later ,a real person bidding but changed their mind or the seller was shill bidding .Either way it's left Hopper with a lead bidder with 10 active bids on the table which look odd !

It does look a bit odd. I actually wonder if it's a user who saw "they're probably damaged" and all the scorn such a high bid attracted and thought better of it. As it was, there were two bidders slugging it out but strangely only on two of the items rather than all 6 which seems a bit odd.
I can kinda understand over £100 for Hopper though given they retailed for £199 (!!??!!)
But a regular Makie? Nah.

It'll be interesting to see what happens anyway. He finally got back to me about bodies, said there's a case of them all wrapped in celophane which I suspect are IM bodies, it would make perfect sense after all. I'm hoping he'll list them at a nice low price because some spare arms even if they are IM plastic would be SUPER useful in case of disaster with my lot.
I wonder why he's taking so long to list stuff though, man i'm impatient hahah. I wanna see it all! It's like a long distance treasure rummage.

Yes, first all that's going on with all these Makies and Makie goods on eBay, and then the weird Makies appearing on the Shop pages on the U.S. Version of the Makie Website......

Things are getting "curiouser and curiouser"....  

Purple_monkfish, some IM bodies would be nice.

I know Jen said that the old 3DP Makie's heads wouldn't fit on the new IM plastic, although I don't think she took the ingenuity and creativity that a lot of us have into consideration when she posted that.  She was probably thinking of people just trying to pop the old head on the new IM body.

However, I can't help wondering if there isn't some way that you could mod the IM body and/or the 3DP doll head so that it would work.  I bet a person could, which be great for people with broken, chewed up, or missing bits on their 3DP Makies. 

To agree with Artful Owl, knowing that Alice/other people involved didn't really want to see these Makies sold makes me pretty uncomfortable with the auctions going on.

I know that if the seller bought the boxes legitimately, then it's up to them what they do with it, but the more this goes on, the more uncomfortable I am over the whole thing. It feels a bit dishonest and disrespectful to buy anything from someone who is basically profiting from a company closing, and potentially profiting when the items weren't supposed to be sold.

The whole thing now just seems really murky, I'm not going to touch any of it. 

These dolls on ebay are so tempting... Arg. But with what appears to be happening "behind the scences" so to speak, does not seem right. To agree with Nat, it really does feel dishonest.

Also, just a note, but the descriptions for the dolls claims that the company has gone out of business, not that they are moving. Just thought that it was note worthy.

I feel like the lab probably could have a claim to the false information regarding the closure of their business, because they could argue it's "defamation" or damaging to their reopening chances etc etc.

I'd really like to know more about the whole situation, to judge what's happened and so on. From what I understand the dolls were only not meant to be sold because they're damaged/worn but the fact we fans are willing to fix up broken and damaged dolls wasn't taken into account, as a company they couldn't sell faulty merchandise even IF we'd all buy it.

As for the bodies, if they're looking for a new IM company they may have needed to shed the old stock but it seems strange as the old stock has zero value outside the Makies community. I wonder why the company didn't just set up a blow out sale from their end to cut out the middleman. Probably didn't think about it or have the time.

Still, it's a bit of a mess and I do hope we get some more info soon. Alice should know that we will listen to her if only she reaches out and tells someone as much as she legally can. Transparency in a small community like this would be very helpful in derailing all the speculation and wild rumors.

Pretty sure btw that 3dp heads will go onto the IM bodies, they just weren't sure the long term effects because the socket is a bit different. However there's zero reason you couldn't use a 3dp body and im limbs like the hybrid boys, and the limbs are the bits that break more often than not. The legs pop off the 3d body a bit easy but I wonder if sueding them might help fix that issue? they need something to improve the "friction" between the two materials so they like.. stick a bit better. Maybe sandpapering the im parts might give some tooth to grip, I dunno.

Here is a post from Jo, clearing everything up.  I don't think this is anything that can't be shared on the public forum as well, better to have the facts here than our continued speculations.  I'm going to copy and paste so that everyone who doesn't Facebook can have it "straight from the horse's mouth" so to speak.








Jo Roach
6 hrs
Hi everyone. Hope you're all well! I want to make a quick post about the Mr Integrale Makie listings on Ebay. When we closed the Makie UK office a couple of weeks ago we had a fair bit of stock in the workshop that needed a new home. I gave most of the accessories and some dolls to Sioux, to do with them as she likes. The Makie team also took their favourite bits and bobs.
The dolls appearing on Ebay were taken by the clearance company and we were told would be recycled for materials. Unfortunately they've chosen to list them for sale. The dolls in question were used for a trade show (Geekpolis) in 2012 and are the old jointed ones that no longer stand. We left them in the office because they were technically broken. They mostly wear the lycra/fur fashions which don't stand the test of time and were discontinued. Please be aware that if you buy those, they won't be the standard that you're now used to. 
Sioux has just left my place with a boot full of tiny wigs, so she now has nearly all of the remaining stock. It would be my preference that you buy from Sioux Breen than from the clearance chaps but whatever you do, we're happy that you are all still loving and buying Makies. Thanks 
heart emoticon


P_m, Please, I will trust you to remove this if you feel there is a problem, or if there is any flak about it being posted here, but really... we are all basically one big family of Makie fans, despite any occasional sibling squabbles.

That's SUPER useful info, thank you!

So Sioux has stuff too? Any idea what she's doing with it? Rehoming, keeping?

Anyway, so... I have an old style Makie here and I can confirm the knees are rather weak. This one is near mint, as in he was barely ever used so I would imagine the ebay ones are probably far less stable on their feet. The old style hinge arms and legs are pretty iffy. If they're not going to be played with a lot they probably will be ok, better they go to adult collectors than children though.
The whole elbow and knee area is very thin and has zero rotational movement and even less give so i'm not convinced they'll survive redressing more than once or twice. It would be a nerve wracking and very fragile process.

However, it might be possible to stabilize their joints or even to replace their old style arms and legs with IM limbs. I'll have a look into all these possibilities for you guys.
But best to think of the ebay lot as "tlc" and hopefully the end prices will reflect that. They deserve new homes but probably need some serious help in their old age.

Broken eye mechs you just use putty or tac.

The outfits stain, be aware of this too. The dark colours STAIN and those stains ain't coming out of that porus material.
The jeans were really notorious for leaving marks. In the white ones you might be able to sorta sand it out with a magic eraser or something but the coloured ones? I dunno. I haven't bothered with mine because he's never removing his outfit hah.

The old style wigs are pretty horrendous too, they're like.. patchy and yeah.. not great. But wigs can be replaced. The wigs are however held on with some sort of cement-like glue that's quite a lot tougher than the cutie wigs to remove. I don't know if that's age or it's something else they used to stick them down but i'm pretty certain if I tried to remove my classic alpha boy's wig it would come apart in my hands and take a lot of picking and tugging and swearing to remove completely lol.

But i'm curious now because if Sioux got the majority of the "good stuff", what's in all those cases this clearance guy has?

I almost forgot, someone asked about the accessories he has and she or Sioux said those should be perfectly fine, no flaws, damage or defects.


**HELP PLEASE!!  This is OT, but I don't know when I be able to successfully get on the forum again, so I'm going to ask for help here. 

 For the past two or three days now, almost every time I try to access the forum to read and/or post, some weird contest/advertisement suddenly hijacks the page and takes over.  There doesn't seem to be any way to close it and return to the forum either!  

It seems to say it's for US citizens, but I was wondering if anyone else is having or has had this problem, and also how can I fix it?!  It's only happening with this site, so please, maybe you can investigate p_m, and get it to stop.  It's frustrating the h*** out of me and driving me nuts!

I think Sioux will probably be selling some of it on, one she has a chance to go through it.  I think what he has "accessory" wise is still "good stuff",  it's possible that Sioux only took what she could fit in her car, or thought she had room for at home at the time.  She said something about seeing if she could get or purchase some of the stuff from him...something about making some things she has complete?....I didn't really understand her post/comment to well.

(@JRyu - yeah, I've noticed some of the banner ads that come up on the forums are redirects, they're very annoying. There's two options, 1) if they're provided by google adservices, then google will cycle them out eventually so you may be able to just wait, as annoying as that is
or 2) You could use an Ad blocker so that the ads don't get time to load and redirect. An Ad blocker is pretty easy to install on desktop/laptop, but I'm not sure about mobile.
I hope it clears up soon, redirects are the worst!)

Hi, I have had this problem on my iPad. I found that by going into settings, Safari and choosing Advanced on the bottom left of the screen and then disabling JavaScript I was able to stop this happening. You will have to remember to enable JavaScript later as it can stop other sites from working properly. Hope this helps.

I had something like that when I tried to access it on my tablet and it said I'd picked up 4 viruses - I freaked !   So I went back to using my pc for it .
Re: Jo's message - I wonder if it isn't worded like that because it has been determined that he was able to sell it like he is doing .Sioux already had some stock and got some more from Jo yesterday I think. I got a couple of pairs of strappy shoes from Sioux when she sent Bo back to me .If I had that much I'd want to get it up for sale and free up the space and if she doesn't hurry up everyone will have spent up with him but she seems to be too busy and will probably sit on it for a while .I think she's got some of the outfit sets and they're missing bits maybe ? I've asked her if she has the white wig (the one I sold on Zoe and haven't got a duplicate of ) and Linda says she's asked her about a boy doll and has been waiting over a month .

Sooooo does this mean that If I do buy one of ebay it would be ok? Haha, they are so tempting! I don't really care if they don't stand up lol. 

Anyway, about the ad thing, I had that happen a while ago, but it has seemed to clear up. I wonder what's wrong with yours. 

Sorry to hear ads are hijacking, I think forummotion themselves deal with those as I have no admin control on the ad front. I run an adblocker, if you're able to download adblock onto your browser I highly recommend it. Ads are getting really intrusive and worse, a lot of malware is hijacking them, it's very very annoying.

As for Makies, it'll be interesting to see what Sioux has too. I'd rather like to see any dolls she got a hold of hehe. Wonder if she nabbed the IM ones and the newer photo shoot ones.

Anyway,

The ones on ebay look like they CAN stand because in a few photos they are stood up. However, that doesn't mean they can stand for long. Makie wheelchair perhaps necessary? heh.
I think it safe to assume they'll need some tlc and maybe some creative repairs. While they all look intact, how worn they are and whether there are cracks and such to the joints isn't very clear. If ex staff say they weren't fit for sale, their issues are likely more than just cosmetic. I'd expect some cracked joints, loose limbs and general wear and tear.

But I like to think the community can offer them a gentle retirement.

That said, I think it's probably a better deal to get an intact doll off Sioux or Georgie or anyone else who has a doll for sale. I suspect the ebay ones will go up to £50+ despite undisclosed flaws but honestly? You can get an undamaged one for about that on the resale market so i'd go that route unless you really LOVE one of the ebay one's faces.
If you really want a classic, it might be a rare opportunity (that said, i've found 3 in 18 months so they can't be that rare)  but if you just want "another Makie" i'd go with one of the ex staff who have some bits and bobs.

I do hope they aren't as bad as they're made out to be, but if they were bad enough that none of the staff wanted to rescue them.. hmmm.. they might have just been forgotten about, who knows.
But i'm erring on the side of caution and assuming they're broken.

Can I fix them? Possible, it's a challenge i'd be willing to take on IF they were cheap enough, but i don't think they'll end up being cheap enough for such a gamble. Ultimately that's what it is, a gamble. The seller has no idea what they should look or feel like so asking him about the condition isn't going to be very useful, so all we can do is guess.

I'm watching them and i'll probably put in a last minute bid on the ones i really love (one i'm certain is pistachio and I really want a pistachio doll damnit!) but i think at the end of the day, i'm not really a lottery kinda gal and I can't afford to spend much on a roll of the dice.

That said, we can totally treat our Makies to new shoes! And hopefully new wigs once Sioux gets sorted and has extra surplus to shed heh. If she has one of those newer bright pink straight wigs, I want it.

OK, I took Noah's jacket off (whoooo eee that was nerve wracking) and yeah, the alpha bodies are bloody fragile feeling.

So the hinge on the elbow and knee is a very basic hinge with a very thin piece that slots onto a sort of pin.
The joints are VERY stiff and VERY hard to move.  I got scared i'd break him if I tried to bend his knees so didn't press the issue.

Now, the ebay makies have these bodies and were used at trade shows, meaning they were quite likely picked up and handled.. and yes, their limbs would have been pushed and shoved and "posed".

Looking at the pistachio boy's arms, there's some oddness to his elbows http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/182030658303?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT see? the hinge looks like it's coming away from the peg. I wonder if part of the pin section is broken. The arm would stay on, but it wouldn't be very stable.

Now, the arms I have on my frankenmakie are broken old style hinge joints and there's this sort of "star" shape around the pin at the end that fits into the slot and LOCKS. In the broken arms that star shape is clearly visible (it looks like a gear almost) while in an intact one it looks like a screwed in bolt (you can just see the top and there's a little line like a screw or bolt would have)
The pistachio makie you can see the "gear" shape so i'm betting at least one of those arms is damaged.

Annoyingly this is the only image that shows any of the limbs uncovered, but i'd say it's very likely both arms and legs have small cracks or have lost part of the bit that holds the peg ON. They will probably be fine as "display only, no vigorous play/posing" dolls but i'd go so far as to say ALL alpha makies should be treated as such. No way would I feel comfortable posing Noah, he just feels way too fragile. His legs feel like they're about to pop off his torso and his knees are SO stiff I feel like they'll crack and snap rather than bend.

Bid with caution guys and if you'd like, i'll get a picture of my intact Alpha to compare.
You might be able to convince the seller to send you nudes hahahaha hahaha.

I totally agree with you about the "don't buy it just because" sorta thing. I'll probably bid once at the end too, I don't really care if I get it or not. I'm really eying Hopper... I really wanted her when she first came out but never got around to getting her so this might be my chance. *crosses fingers*