Jonathan A. Logan designer (with Shawna Trpcic) of the original Malcolm Reynolds Browncoat, is now offering them on eBay.
Original maker of the vary collectible Browncoat from the series, Jonathan A. Logan, is offering every Firefly fans an opportunity to buy an authentic Browncoat. Do not be fooled by the other fake Browncoats that are on the Internet. If you have done your research, ( FAKE is not a bad FOUR LETTER word , but FAKE is not even a good word for copy. ) you will know that Jonathan created this coat along with the costume desinger, Shawna Trpcic.
This coat is being offered in sizes small, medium and large-limited quanity available.
here is the opportunity
Coat is made out of deerskin leather from New Zealand.
These coats will have the official hardware that was used on the original coat for Malcolm Reynolds.
You could wear a “kinda good one” made to look almost like it
if you choose…
Be true to your Browncoat self… wear the correct leather with the correct hardwear, if you choose.
YES YOU CAN !
OK, a little touchy about fakes, but otherwise a hell of an opportunity.
I wonder if these still have his logo stamped into the buckles? Hard to tell from the auction picture.
Some of them also used to have bisected front panels, which doesn’t appear to be the case in the auction picture. Maybe he’s changed some things from the replicas he sold before?
EDIT: Ah, no. It is because those photos are of an original browncoat, not the one being auctioned. I knew I’d seen them before. Same as in:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Malcolm-Reynolds-ORIGINAL-Firefly-Browncoat-w-COA_W0QQitemZ220218920288
There is a comparison of one of the reproductions and an original coat midway down the thread here:
http://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=13396&highlight=logan
They likely do have his stamp on the buckles… he does that to mark it as authentic, and when he made mine, he didn’t have any non-stamped available no matter how much extra I offered. He also insisted that the original had a two-piece front “panel”, as it’s not possible to get pieces of hide big enough to do it with just one piece, but I saw the original at B3 and it didn’t look like two pieces to me… admittedly I wasn’t specifically checking, but still…
After reading the thread on the RPF and Akin’s post above, I’m not too sure about sinking alot of coin into one of these. Why doesn’t Logan show a picture of a reproduction coat instead of the tiny photo of the original? Or even better, a comparison pic like on the RPF? He should also state that the buckles have his logo on them. People need to know EXACTLY what they’re getting! Oh well…..Guess I’ll be passing on this, despite really wanting one.
Oh, make no mistake, his coats are shiny as hell. I sold off the Abbyshot Browncoat I wore at the B3 right quick once I got my Logan Browncoat. He even customized mine, by putting some hidden pockets inside the coat for my cellphone and camera. The logo on the buckles is only really visible if you get up close and look…
The price on eBay is also less than a third of what I paid for mine, although I guess we don’t know what the reserve price is…
There’s lots of things that should be noted about Logan’s browncoats, most of which have already been mentioned. The buckles are annoying with his logo on there. It’d be less annoying if they were more subtle, but a giant STAR on the front of them is really stupid.
I don’t know what his problem is with the two-piece fronts either, the original were only one piece, I’ve seen dozens of pictures that confirm this, but I think what it is is those are much more expensive, and he probably only uses stock materials for these replicas rather than custom ordering materials for them.
This brings up another point, though. My coat had gold lettering STAMPED on the front of the coat on each panel. Through a lot of careful scraping with a wire and a knife I managed to get them mostly off, but as far as I can tell there’s really no way to remove them completely, and a trained eye inspecting them will always be able to see them. It won’t be obvious to a casual observer out in public, but it’ll always be noticeable to you, especially if you spent 1300 bucks on it like I did.
The biggest problem I’ve encountered is that there are strips of cloth used, as far as I can tell, to hold pieces of the coat together with rubber cement. All along the edges of the coat a black piece of cloth is between two pieces of the deerskin. This wouldn’t be an issue except for the fact that they are rubber cemented, and if you live in a particularly hot area that rubber cement will give way and those strips of black cloth will begin to fall out. They’re still sewn into the coat along the seams, but what this means it that you’ll occasionally long black strips hanging off of the coat, which you’ll then have to go through with rubber cement yourself to repair it. Logan will offer to repair it for you if you ask him to, but you have to pay for the shipping which can run upwards of 50 bucks.
Finally, though these problems aren’t enormous and aren’t guaranteed to happen to you, you should be aware that Logan is notorious for being not very customer friendly at all. He’s very friendly up to the point you give him your money, but every time I’ve emailed him (and I’m always very polite about it) afterwards to talk about issues with the coat he always shrugs it off and without coming right out and saying it, basically lets me know that the coat is what it is, with all the problems that come along with it and he’s not willing to do anything about it. Talking to other people who’ve had problems with their coat, they’ve pretty much said the same thing, and I’ve even heard on two separate occasions Logan took a pretty mean-spirited attitude with them, acting like they’re *lucky* a bigshot LA tailor like him would make them anything. I never had an experience that bad, but I do think it’s fair to let people know the dangers of working with this man.
Finally, the coat does have the tendency to stain very easily, even in ways you wouldn’t think of. Don’t sit down on leather chairs in this coat. I sat down in a black leather chair the first day I got this coat and the chair bled onto the coat in many different areas. I’ve sat down in this chair in other leather (and cloth) coats and stuff and this has never happened any other time. I’m not blaming the coat necessarily, but just keep it in mind.
Now, all this said and done, I really do love my browncoat. If you’re a hardcore collector of this kind of stuff, and you really love Firefly this is the best reproduction of Mal’s coat you can find anywhere, and compared to this coat no other reproduction even compares. The deerskin especially makes all the difference, and I wouldn’t pay money for any other kind.
Is it worth it? I don’t know. If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t pay 1300 for it, but I’d be willing to pay 800 or less for it. So if you can get it for that kind of deal, I’d say it’s worth it.
Wow… hadn’t heard about the problems with customer service, but then again I just walk into his studio on Melrose and deal with him face-to-face. An advantage of living in LA, I suppose…
Fortunately, for me, I don’t particularly like the smell of leather (wallet size is fine, but an entire trenchcoat of leather? No way) which means I’ll never be buying one of the originals. I may sew a cloth version one of these days…
I am looking to buy this coat for my friend where can i order one it isnt on ebay…