AUTHENTICITY QUESTIONS IN A NUTSHELL
Since the Search feature has been down more than it's been up lately, I'm going to post a few of my previous posts in one place to make them easier to find.
"I thought it was a rule that..."
There are very few hard and fast rules when it comes to Coaches, no matter what those Ebay Guides and other internet sites say. Every "rule" has a least one exception, and the only thing that really helps is experience and having a few genuine items from an impeccable source like a Coach store to use for comparison. Not all bags will have the same creed spacing, the same hangtag grommet, or any other details unless they were made at the same plant in the same month.
What's true on Coaches today isn't necessarily true on Coaches from a few years ago or older. Coach didn't start using metal grommets on their hangtags as a regular thing until somewhere around '03 going by the catalogs I have. Brass hangtags on a bag don't always mean it's fake.
About things like where the underscores and dashes and gaps are supposed to be in the creeds - there was no exact standard up until the last few years - every plant started out with it's own dies and templates, and it's perfectly normal for them to be different. Some Ebay posters can even tell what country a "classic" bag was made in by the creed font and format and the spacing of the serial number digits. So don't read too much into it if an earlier bag, say before 2004, has a creed that's a bit different, although someone here should still take a look at it to be sure.
Don't depend on "rules", Coach changes the rules as they go, and for every rule except maybe one or two there's an exception or at least a disagreement.
......
COACH SERIAL NUMBERS, REAL AND FAKE
There's a list at the Ebay Purses Forum with some of the most commonly used fake serial numbers, it's worth printing out before it disappears again:
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=1000685987&start=0
Serial numbers were introduced in the mid 70s, and every bag had its own unique serial number. These early serial numbers had 3 digits followed by 4 digits (101-9090). This changed to 4 digits followed by 3 digits in the late 80s (1010-909). In 1994 letters were introduced into serial numbers. The middle number in the first set of 3 digits indicates the year of manufacture (A7B-9990) = 1997. The serial numbers were usually hand-stamped and they used a small press with rotating wheels that they could advance to the next number in the series. Often numbers would be a bit uneven and a lot of times you can even see a horizontal spacer line or the edge of the next or previous number in the series.
(There are some early to mid 70's bags that have the Coach Creed and an obviously glued-on serial mark that was added to the bag after it was manufactured. You can see that the serial number was applied to a leather strip and then placed under the Coach Creed in these early purses. Sometimes the strip with the number would come lose or fall off leaving just a strip of bare leather where the number should be.)
The 7-number serials were phased out in 1994, and replaced with an alphanumeric serial which had three digits representing the factory, year and season, and after the hyphen, the four digit code for the bag model. For example K4M-5130 would be a Station Bag (5130), made in 1994 (the number 4, in the first set). The K & M are factory and manufacturing codes. So every single Station Bag made in 1994 in that particular factory could have the identical serial number. And some popular bags were made in more than one factory so the same style number could have different prefixes on different bags.
Coach did NOT add the fourth digit in the serial prefix until it was necessary to prevent year repetition, in 2004.
The pattern goes like this: J4J = 1994, J5J = 1995, etc... then J0J = 2000, J1J = 2001, J2J = 2002, J3J = 2003, but then they go to four digits J04J = 2004, J05J = 2005, etc... So a bag made in 1996 would have a prefix of x6x-, but one made in 2006 would show x06x-.
In 2005 and 2006 even more codes were added although the year code is still in the same place in the sequence. Bags made just for the Factory Stores will now often have the letter F before the style number. Some bags such as the 2006 Legacy line can have as many as ten digits in the serial number, five on either side of the hyphen, and current bags made for the Factory Stores can have as many as eleven digits. For one year in 2005 some style numbers began to include letters as well as numbers until Coach decided to expand the style number to five digits.
......
ADVICE FOR INEXPERIENCED EBAY BUYERS
Everything sold on Ebay is supposed to be genuine but that doesn't mean it is. And someone who's knowingly selling fake bags, wallets, keychains, whatever, is always going to claim his are genuine - if someone's already selling fakes, do you think they'd hesitate for one single second to claim that their items are Genuine or Authentic? In fact, the more a seller emphasises those words in his listings, the more sure I am that the items are probably fakes.
PLEASE don't expect every seller on Ebay to be honest and to tell the truth about their merchandise! The dishonest ones lie about authenticity, condition, where they got it (the fakes are often "gifts" from moms, sisters, friends, bosses (!), ex-husbands, ex-boyfriends, the Easter Bunny or the Man In The Moon). The stories some of these crooks can tell about where they got their wonderful beautiful "rare" bags could win a Nobel Prize for creative writing.
Sellers will steal photos from Coach's website or from other Ebay sellers (both are illegal AND against Ebay's rules, BTW), will deliberately take tiny or out of focus photos to hide flaws or details that might show the item is fake, or take a picture of a real bag and then send a fake instead. Don't EVER depend on what someone says in their listing. Let the posters here take a look at it and tell you if the item is real and if the seller can be trusted.
Just to give everyone an idea of the extent of the problem - probably 5 to 10 percent of the Coach purses on Ebay are fakes, the numbers get much higher with popular and easy to fake bags like the Signature Stripes, Carlys, and most of the newer Signature styles. But EVERY bag probably has been faked including current and classic leather bags.
Accessories like wristlets, scarves, and even iPod cases can be faked. But the biggest danger in buying a fake is with Coach wallets and keychains. At least ninety percent are probably counterfeit. Please, NEVER buy any of those on Ebay (and never buy them at all on any other auction site or from any internet "wholesaler") without asking here first. Never NEVER buy a wallet from a seller who seems to have an unlimited supply - that's the most common sign that the items are fake. And 100 percent Positive Feedback doesn't prove that someone's items are genuine either.
Remember the Rules To Bid By:
Sellers can LIE.
Photos can be STOLEN.
Feedback can be FAKED.
If something looks too good to be true - IT IS.
Ebay demands that all name brand items be authentic, so any seller who knows they're selling fakes is simply going to lie and use "authentic" in the listing whether it is or not. I never pay attention to whether a seller says something's authentic or not unless a seller uses the word only in certain listings and they're obviously mixing real and fake and are trying to cover their butts by leaving the word out of the fake listings. The only things that prove authenticity are the details of the item itself, the provenance of the photos (whether they were really taken by the seller and show the actual item being sold) and the seller's history of Current and Completed listings and a study of their Feedback through Ebay and Toolhaus. I don't agree at all with some Ebay "buying Guides" I've seen that tell potential buyers to watch for and only bid on auctions that use the word "authentic", because every fake I've ever reported has that word in the listing somewhere. Anyone who believes a "guide" that gives that kind of advice has been seriously misled.
Rule Number One of the Rules To Bid By says that "SELLERS CAN LIE". In fact, it seems that the more a seller howls that their items are "AUTHENTIC !!!" the more likely they are to be fake. The crooks who make their living selling fakes are career criminals who would lie to their kids, their mothers, their grandmothers, and the Pope himself if it meant making a few extra dollars.
Ebay can be a very dangerous place for an inexperienced buyer trying to find any kind of designer name. Almost every brand sold in any store has been counterfeited.
Since the Search feature has been down more than it's been up lately, I'm going to post a few of my previous posts in one place to make them easier to find.
"I thought it was a rule that..."
There are very few hard and fast rules when it comes to Coaches, no matter what those Ebay Guides and other internet sites say. Every "rule" has a least one exception, and the only thing that really helps is experience and having a few genuine items from an impeccable source like a Coach store to use for comparison. Not all bags will have the same creed spacing, the same hangtag grommet, or any other details unless they were made at the same plant in the same month.
What's true on Coaches today isn't necessarily true on Coaches from a few years ago or older. Coach didn't start using metal grommets on their hangtags as a regular thing until somewhere around '03 going by the catalogs I have. Brass hangtags on a bag don't always mean it's fake.
About things like where the underscores and dashes and gaps are supposed to be in the creeds - there was no exact standard up until the last few years - every plant started out with it's own dies and templates, and it's perfectly normal for them to be different. Some Ebay posters can even tell what country a "classic" bag was made in by the creed font and format and the spacing of the serial number digits. So don't read too much into it if an earlier bag, say before 2004, has a creed that's a bit different, although someone here should still take a look at it to be sure.
Don't depend on "rules", Coach changes the rules as they go, and for every rule except maybe one or two there's an exception or at least a disagreement.
......
COACH SERIAL NUMBERS, REAL AND FAKE
There's a list at the Ebay Purses Forum with some of the most commonly used fake serial numbers, it's worth printing out before it disappears again:
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=1000685987&start=0
Serial numbers were introduced in the mid 70s, and every bag had its own unique serial number. These early serial numbers had 3 digits followed by 4 digits (101-9090). This changed to 4 digits followed by 3 digits in the late 80s (1010-909). In 1994 letters were introduced into serial numbers. The middle number in the first set of 3 digits indicates the year of manufacture (A7B-9990) = 1997. The serial numbers were usually hand-stamped and they used a small press with rotating wheels that they could advance to the next number in the series. Often numbers would be a bit uneven and a lot of times you can even see a horizontal spacer line or the edge of the next or previous number in the series.
(There are some early to mid 70's bags that have the Coach Creed and an obviously glued-on serial mark that was added to the bag after it was manufactured. You can see that the serial number was applied to a leather strip and then placed under the Coach Creed in these early purses. Sometimes the strip with the number would come lose or fall off leaving just a strip of bare leather where the number should be.)
The 7-number serials were phased out in 1994, and replaced with an alphanumeric serial which had three digits representing the factory, year and season, and after the hyphen, the four digit code for the bag model. For example K4M-5130 would be a Station Bag (5130), made in 1994 (the number 4, in the first set). The K & M are factory and manufacturing codes. So every single Station Bag made in 1994 in that particular factory could have the identical serial number. And some popular bags were made in more than one factory so the same style number could have different prefixes on different bags.
Coach did NOT add the fourth digit in the serial prefix until it was necessary to prevent year repetition, in 2004.
The pattern goes like this: J4J = 1994, J5J = 1995, etc... then J0J = 2000, J1J = 2001, J2J = 2002, J3J = 2003, but then they go to four digits J04J = 2004, J05J = 2005, etc... So a bag made in 1996 would have a prefix of x6x-, but one made in 2006 would show x06x-.
In 2005 and 2006 even more codes were added although the year code is still in the same place in the sequence. Bags made just for the Factory Stores will now often have the letter F before the style number. Some bags such as the 2006 Legacy line can have as many as ten digits in the serial number, five on either side of the hyphen, and current bags made for the Factory Stores can have as many as eleven digits. For one year in 2005 some style numbers began to include letters as well as numbers until Coach decided to expand the style number to five digits.
......
ADVICE FOR INEXPERIENCED EBAY BUYERS
Everything sold on Ebay is supposed to be genuine but that doesn't mean it is. And someone who's knowingly selling fake bags, wallets, keychains, whatever, is always going to claim his are genuine - if someone's already selling fakes, do you think they'd hesitate for one single second to claim that their items are Genuine or Authentic? In fact, the more a seller emphasises those words in his listings, the more sure I am that the items are probably fakes.
PLEASE don't expect every seller on Ebay to be honest and to tell the truth about their merchandise! The dishonest ones lie about authenticity, condition, where they got it (the fakes are often "gifts" from moms, sisters, friends, bosses (!), ex-husbands, ex-boyfriends, the Easter Bunny or the Man In The Moon). The stories some of these crooks can tell about where they got their wonderful beautiful "rare" bags could win a Nobel Prize for creative writing.
Sellers will steal photos from Coach's website or from other Ebay sellers (both are illegal AND against Ebay's rules, BTW), will deliberately take tiny or out of focus photos to hide flaws or details that might show the item is fake, or take a picture of a real bag and then send a fake instead. Don't EVER depend on what someone says in their listing. Let the posters here take a look at it and tell you if the item is real and if the seller can be trusted.
Just to give everyone an idea of the extent of the problem - probably 5 to 10 percent of the Coach purses on Ebay are fakes, the numbers get much higher with popular and easy to fake bags like the Signature Stripes, Carlys, and most of the newer Signature styles. But EVERY bag probably has been faked including current and classic leather bags.
Accessories like wristlets, scarves, and even iPod cases can be faked. But the biggest danger in buying a fake is with Coach wallets and keychains. At least ninety percent are probably counterfeit. Please, NEVER buy any of those on Ebay (and never buy them at all on any other auction site or from any internet "wholesaler") without asking here first. Never NEVER buy a wallet from a seller who seems to have an unlimited supply - that's the most common sign that the items are fake. And 100 percent Positive Feedback doesn't prove that someone's items are genuine either.
Remember the Rules To Bid By:
Sellers can LIE.
Photos can be STOLEN.
Feedback can be FAKED.
If something looks too good to be true - IT IS.
Ebay demands that all name brand items be authentic, so any seller who knows they're selling fakes is simply going to lie and use "authentic" in the listing whether it is or not. I never pay attention to whether a seller says something's authentic or not unless a seller uses the word only in certain listings and they're obviously mixing real and fake and are trying to cover their butts by leaving the word out of the fake listings. The only things that prove authenticity are the details of the item itself, the provenance of the photos (whether they were really taken by the seller and show the actual item being sold) and the seller's history of Current and Completed listings and a study of their Feedback through Ebay and Toolhaus. I don't agree at all with some Ebay "buying Guides" I've seen that tell potential buyers to watch for and only bid on auctions that use the word "authentic", because every fake I've ever reported has that word in the listing somewhere. Anyone who believes a "guide" that gives that kind of advice has been seriously misled.
Rule Number One of the Rules To Bid By says that "SELLERS CAN LIE". In fact, it seems that the more a seller howls that their items are "AUTHENTIC !!!" the more likely they are to be fake. The crooks who make their living selling fakes are career criminals who would lie to their kids, their mothers, their grandmothers, and the Pope himself if it meant making a few extra dollars.
Ebay can be a very dangerous place for an inexperienced buyer trying to find any kind of designer name. Almost every brand sold in any store has been counterfeited.
).
