I'm noticing several auctions now from Hong Kong and China etc. that are featuring near replicas of Hobbit and Super Heroes for pennies on the dollar compared to to US retail.. this begs the question if we will see even more in the future and if it will hurt long term investors?  One auction alone had sold 195 Super Hero sets with almost all the Avengers I believe for $13.88 and an untrained eye could not tell the difference.

There are a bunch of recent threads on the subject...

 

Yes it will hurt the value and yes we will continue to see more in the future.

Has anyone here bought them yet?

I just bought 8 Iron-Man set for $14.50 with free shipping.....curious to see how this plays out! Worst case scenario I'm out $14.50.....more to follow.......

This will destroy the minifigure market.  Sucks...

I just bought 8 Iron-Man set for $14.50 with free shipping.....curious to see how this plays out! Worst case scenario I'm out $14.50.....more to follow.......

 

To an avid fan of the LEGO product, they are fairly easy to distinguish as fakes... but to the parents who buy the product for their children to PLAY with? Just as good.

 

LEGO also has no real reason to take action (unless the knockoffs contain lead paint or something along those lines) because it's not going to affect their bottom dollar as much as it will that of a reseller.

Seems terrible for parting out, but will this hurt long term NIB set value?

Some of the sets are almost indistinguishable from the real thing, so far all the fake boxed sets have said "LELE" where it should say "LEGO", it would not be hard to change that one word.this has the potential to be a very serious problem even for sealed sets.

I bought the Iron Man figs because I zero faith that Lego will go back and make these armors. Plastic quality is almost right there with Lego. The printing is a crap shoot. Some are really good some are terrible and others are a little misaligned.