How to make sure Flutter wings are original?

[Taffeta]

I agree. It needs to be the wiki as the main go to place for pony id. We are at a point where a comprehensive guide to identifying repro stuff is not only important but the moral thing to do to protect people like the seller in this case.

I don;t have any repro wings either, though if the image I posted above is useful at all to any kind of comparison site I don't mind it being used. My images of the first wave attachments are not clear enough to be a good comparison image unfortunately and I'm not at home so I can't try and get a good image of my MIB first release ones...but I suspect it's really comparisons of repro next to original that would be the most helpful. And I think complete first set wings with the coloured tabs intact are quite difficult to find and even more difficult to get out of a pony wing socket without damage...

[Carrehz]

I can't help any since off-hand I don't think I have any original wings, just repros, but I definitely support the idea of putting up some comparison pics on the Wiki or somewhere else, it'd be very helpful and interesting too

[Galactica]

Well I've had both original (from my own original Peach Blossom) and repros (white tabs) - and I can tell you that they look IDENTICAL except for the tabs -

I was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO happy back when someone figured out how to make perfect repros-  I still remember the day I got my original flutter pony (possibly getting too old for ponies but still loved them)

my sisters and I each got one-  within an hour my pony had a broken wing...  within days, my sisters had also broken one each-  between the three of us we had a working set- but we knew they would break if we played with them so they went out and into a jewelry box never to flutter again...

[LadyMoondancer]

Yep, as others have said the white tabs are the sign of repro wings.   

I'm glad they exist since otherwise flutter pony wings would probably cost as much as Mimic.  (They were about the same price as Mimic in the late 90s when I started collecting.)  Fortunately the existence of the repro wings means that real flutter wings are also more affordable, since lots of people are happy with repros and therefore don't go after the real wings.

Flutter ponies are pretty easy to obtain (except Hollywood and maybe Pink Dreams);  you can imagine how crazy prices would be if every G1 collector was trying to obtain real flutter wings for thirteen flutter ponies. 

[Skeen]

I know I have Hollywood's real wings, so hot pink tab, and I think I have Pink Dreams' real wings too (tab v 2.0), but I don't think I have any repros.  I'll ask Aadra.  If she does I'll try for some comparison pics you guys can add to the Wiki. 

[Galactica]

Oh I just found some more repro wings in my stash, and they have clear tabs.  So I guess the repros can be clear or white.

The originals were really obviously part of the pony- the tabs were the exact same color as the pony (greenish and blueish)  But the wings themselves were so close that you'd never notice even when my pony was wearing one original and one repro...

[Nella]

Thank you all so much for willing to set up something like that.

Value-wise.... what do flutter pony's with repro wings cost compared to the pony's with original wings? Let's say the more random flutters, not the more special ones.

[LadyMoondancer]

Looking at eBay's completed auctions, it looks like a flutter with original wings have sold for between $25 - $50.  Although part of that price is for the pony herself of course.   The ones I saw were also 2nd year flutters (Tropical Breeze and so on), not sure if that would be a factor in a winged flutter going for more/less.

Edit: Oh, I just saw a Rosedust with wings who sold for $16.

[Baby Sugarberry]

Repo wings have definitely suppressed the original wing's value by a very large margin - I also remember back when an intact flutter was 100$+.   These days they're actually fairly equal in value, ~15-20$ if I had to guess just for a set of wings. More for the rarer ones like Hollywood of course.

[Taffeta]

Repo wings have definitely suppressed the original wing's value by a very large margin - I also remember back when an intact flutter was 100$+.   These days they're actually fairly equal in value, ~15-20$ if I had to guess just for a set of wings. More for the rarer ones like Hollywood of course.

I wonder if that was a predominately US trend. All of my flutters have real wings in one sense or another (some have been repaired though) and none of them ever cost me very much. Aside from the ones I was given and the Pink Dreams that came from the market with her wings on a card ready to put in, most of my flutter wings came from online transactions and none of them were ever in the price bracket you guys are remembering (bearing in mind I winged my flutters in the late 1990s). So maybe that was a US thing? I dunno. I know I have Honeysuckle and Peach Blossom (?) from the US with wings and ribbons and that was before repros and they cost $20 for both so I never thought about it. MIB flutters used to be more expensive, but not all loose ones were that bad...

Admittedly I did repair some of my wings though. Maybe absolutely intact ones were more expensive? And I admit that a couple of my first set ones don't have their own wings tab-wise - so that might also add to it, if you';re looking for a specific colour match for a first set pony...?

[LadyMoondancer]

You were definitely getting some good deals, $20 for a pair of intact flutter wings was a steal.  I once sold a single flutter wing I found in a thift shop for over $20, and the entire tab had broken off--not just the colored part, but the entire "sticky-out" part, so I don't even know how the new owner ended up sticking it on their pony.

I don't think it was predominately a US thing . . . It was just that they were ponies everyone had, but that there were very few existing intact wings for.  Like the situation where everyone is looking for the Soda Sipping ponies' sodas, except moreso because the flutter ponies are more common, more popular, and there are thirteen of them.

Chanth / Summerwing was the earliest maker of repro flutter wings, and I think she sold them in the late 90s, so it's possible that you bought flutters after she started making them?  I believe hers didn't have tabs at all, but were just clear plastic to the ends.  They looked identical to real ones, except that some of the ones she sold didn't have the iridescent sheen.  (It was an option . . . you could get them without iridescence, or with iridescence for a slightly higher price.)

[Taffeta]

Hrm. I remember Chanth, but was she making them before 1998?

I do think it was different in the UK, though. I think because there were so many unknowns over UK ponies and there were fewer pictures on ebay, and since a lot of people on your side of the atlantic were still unsure about the whole shipping abroad thing...I got a lot of wings in UK lots which cost less because they were here, not there. Remember, there were not so many people from the UK then...and why would US people spend extra shipping ponies they already had? At that time US people were only interested in UK exclusive ponies. Not things like wings for flutters

BUT Peach Blossom and Honeysuckle are American and they had their stickers, ribbons, and intact wings :/ And they were really cheap. So yeah. Dunno. Must have lucked out there. Rosedust, Lily and Morning Glory I have in their boxes. I suspect it might be that I winged the 2nd set socket Forgetmenot because for some reason it was easier to get 2nd set wings (and definitely easier to re-wing them O.O).

Thinking about it, I might have got some wings from carboot sales. And I did harvest both wings and tabs from any lot I had so that my sister had wings for hers as well as for mine. So I don't remember selling any. But I think that Peach Blossom and Honeysuckle were my only US purchases (discounting Morning Glory in her box). And I know my Hollywood has the wrong wings. Real wings, but not hers. That would be expensive

I actually have 3 Tropical Breezes with wings - one MIB, my childhood one with repaired original wings and then one I got complete with her UK box and ribbon who I kept. I still have to repair her wings, though. But that would have been after the repros started coming out...

[LadyMoondancer]

Good point about eBay (and people's unfamiliarity with international shipping)!  People probably weren't as excited about flutter wings as foreign ponies, because it was crazy and exciting finding out there were so many more ponies than anyone thought. 

But they were a close second.  They were on every want list and most people didn't have any at all.  And although ponies were pretty common in thrift stores back then--flutter wings weren't.  Just too breakable!

I did find a DIY flutter wing 'pop bottle' tutorial, and the first line on it sums it up:  "Wouldn't it be nice if flutter wings weren't so fragile? If flutter ponies with wings weren't so rare? But let's face it, original wings are beyond the reach of most of us."

[Baby Sugarberry]

I'll second your experience seems out of the ordinary (and lucky!) to me, Taffeta.
I've found a grand total of five flutter pony wings in the wild, over the course of 20+ years of collecting.  One pair (broken and repaired) on a Peach Blossom, one clear tab (broken and repaired) set with a Cloud Puff, and a singleton (no tab, wing only) in a play set.  They're definitely not common or easy to find.   I've had probably 50+ flutter ponies go through my hands.

[Taffeta]

Thinking about it more, I remembered the local collector who sold up in 1998 (she had around 500-600 ponies, etc). In buying from her I just remembered one thing we had was a large grey tub of accessory items for £10. It had in it hats and scarves for brother ponies, princess hats, wands, dragons, ponywear...I think there's a good chance there were some wings in that, or that I got some of the wings from her collection. But I do remember having a lot of wings very easily back in the early days. The only ones I remember getting from the US are those two winged ones I mentioned earlier.

But then again trading rules were so different at that time because everything was so fluid. And it wasn't hard to trade UK ponies for stuff either. I didn't trade for wings, but I suspect I really didn't look at market value of much stuff because I wasn't necessarily buying things so much as trading. I didn't realise the market value of some of the ponies I got through trading until later (Baby Gametime, Rapunzel, etc) so maybe I just don't remember :/ Buying stuff from the US was more tricky because it meant sending cash, so I generally only did it if it was something special. But I do remember that my Glory and Medley MOC were $30 each at that time...so it's hard for me to put into context with that the idea of $100 flutter wings O.O.