Prototype Casey Jones (2003) on eBay
 

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Casey Prototype

Is this real? Or did someone just paint over a retail Casey? How rare would this prototype be (if it's real)?

I've seen this prototype, and a number of others from the new line, show up on ebay all around this price, and as far as I know, they don't sell. I don't belive they are too rare, if they are even real, but obviously they are rarer than just the standard fig...i've always passed on them myself

It is a test run figure rather than a true prototype. That is, after the tooling for the figure was complete, they made some figures as a test of the quality of the molds. Often they will also produce extras at this point to ship to the license holder for approvals. As for how rare it is, that is impossible to tell. They might have made 5, 10, or 100 figures as part of the test run.

Personally, I wouldn't pay money for it. It is basicly just a regular run figure molded in the wrong colors with silver spray paint on his butt. Now, if it were the original 2 up, that would be a different story.

Yeah TMNTman is right it's just a testshot. Testshots usually go from $10-30 depending on the figure (the rarer the figure the higher the testshot cost will go). Usually these testshot figures are sold by people in Asia where they either run the thing at night or just steal a bunch of figures from the trash heap. It's a new deal because I think they realized that collectors go ape **** for prototypes. Unfortunately it isn't a true proto. A true proto is usually made out of some sort of clay and is hand painted, those will go from $100-1,000 depending on the figure. The price for casey isn't bad, but it isn't really worth it either. It's definitely more rare than a regular figure release and would be something few other people would have, but in this figures case it's ugly as hell. Another thing about test shots is sometimes they look really cool with the funky colors, in this case it doesn't.

Yeah... and there have been a few sellers who try to pass off stripped figures as prototypes too.

As a general rule, the chances of getting the actual prototypes are rare. The originals are made out of wax anyway and then cast...

I would just hate for someone to pay for a test figure or a stripped figure. A few years back, a "prototype" Scratch sold for hundreds of dollars (almost a grand I believe it was), when I am almost positive it was just a stripped down copy.

Yea, thats exactly why i've never picked one up...too friggin ugly and overall not very impressive