We all scour sites like eBay for good deals, and the Stormtrooper is one of the most available costumes around. I don't know if it's because of the ease of the vacuum forming process as compared with the more involved fiberglass and resin casting, but the TK/TD armor seems to be one of the more recasted items on eBay.
Some of us post links to questionable eBay auctions where the scrutiny either puts pressure on the Seller to withdraw, or someone at eBay takes notice and blows the auction (and Seller account) out of the sky.
What happens unfortunately is that after an auction is removed, so are the photos. Future readers do not benefit from the whistleblower threads if the reference to the auction are gone. Further, recasters sometimes create new userIDs for themselves, and comparing historical photographs of what may be the same item can be immensely valuable.
My suggestion therefore is that if you want to comment on an auction, please consider:
1. Creating a Photobucket account (
http://www.photobucket.com) and upload the photos there. (You can save the photos on your hard drive, and upload them to your Photobucket account).
2. Quote the text of the auction.
Once this information is gone, the whole thread is of no use to the community, and newcomers can't connect the dots, and we'd have to look out for one another all over again.
This kind of archiving will help people for years to come.
Additional suggestions.
* I prefer Photobucket, as Imageshack has an advertisement pop-up that sets off my anti-virus and I receive warnings.
* Remember to create subdirectories/folders in Photobucket, so you have a structure to save into. If you do your organizing now, things will be easier to find.
* This step is for the hackers at heart: you don't have to save them on your HD first. You can right click on an image and select "Properties". If you see the URL of the image, click on it, and select "Ctrl-A" (for "SELECT ALL") and "Ctrl-C" to Copy. Now examine the uploading options and you'll see a tab marked "Web URL". Click into a blank field and hit "Ctrl-V" to Paste the copied contents in there. This will allow Photobucket to reach across the web and snag the image.
* When finding images, get the largest possible. Sometimes you get a new pop-up window. The upper left will have a link say "Larger Image" or something like that. Tiny images rarely have enough information in them to form a cogent hypothesis (that's something Lt. Cmdr. Data would say!)
Thank you. May the Schwartz be with you!
