Posted 29 July 2016 - 02:18 AM
I saw this earlier and was wondering the same thing...If you look closely at what would be the thumb, the nubby "warts" are not completely raised. Close to the finger nubs, around the "warts" the characteristic grainy texture of the Claw is also lacking. It is there but very subtle and not nearly as detailed as the rest of the figure. Hypothetically, all of this could be manipulated by someone who knows what they are doing. It would probably take a little trial and error to make it look that clean though.
The thing that would likely be more difficult to do would be to manipulate the mouth. I could be mistaken but when I compared it to other images of Claws, the mouth is misshapen. You can also see that at the top of the mouth the typical MUSCLE plastic sheen exists. This may suggest that it could be a factory error.
As we know, Claws can commonly fetch $10-30. So if someone were to concoct a fake factory error they would be doing so under the belief that they would get more than that for it. Personally, I wouldn't think it would bring much more than that at auction. It could be that one or more of the end of the fingers was mangled and thus they may try it in an attempt to turn what would be a worthless Claw into something slightly more collectible. The rest of the Claw appears to be in good shape so one would think it would normally sell for $20-30 which would decrease the likelihood someone would ruin a perfectly good Claw. And again, I don't think this type of error is worth much more than that. It may also suggest that it was not a Claw that merely had a fingertip or two damaged.
With that (my long and drawn out analysis) I would personally lean to it being a legit factory error. I don't look for, nor collect MUSCLE men factory errors so I really don't know how common they are. Has anyone seen many of these type of errors before? Or have a guesstimate as to what the ending price will be?