You should really ask at the Authenticate This Coach thread. This one is for general authenticity information and usually isn't checked very often.
answers to AUTHENTICITY questions!!!
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You should really ask at the Authenticate This Coach thread. This one is for general authenticity information and usually isn't checked very often.
Originally Posted by Coach Dedicated 
Don't know about you guys - but this bag almost had me fooled. DOesn't this look fake? I've only seen the metal long handles on the patent sabrinas and never have seen a small white tag inside the bag. What do you think? NMA
http://cgi.ebay.com/AUTHENTIC-COACH-...item2564be8de0
Seller onionhead08's listing is a fake Sabrina bag and additionally, the seller inflates the prices on her items by shill bidding.
I don't recommend onionhead08.
Don't know about you guys - but this bag almost had me fooled. DOesn't this look fake? I've only seen the metal long handles on the patent sabrinas and never have seen a small white tag inside the bag. What do you think? NMAhttp://cgi.ebay.com/AUTHENTIC-COACH-...item2564be8de0
I know this is the wrong place to post this but in case it doesn't get posted on the AT thread, I want to get this seller's ID out there.
Seller onionhead08's listing is a fake Sabrina bag and additionally, the seller inflates the prices on her items by shill bidding.
I don't recommend onionhead08.
Oops, nevermind, I just answered my own question.Coach Serial Numbers
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 beginning 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.
Thus, 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 beginning in 2005 some style numbers began to include letters as well as numbers until Coach decided to expand the style number to five digits.
Thanks to all the posters at Ebay's Shoes And Purses forum and other boards who compiled all this great information!
A05U-1444
This is another serial number that has been turning up with increasing regularity.
There was a post on the purse board questioning a bag with that serial number and I searched and found 1/2 dozen other posts on tPF about bags with the same number.
If a bag with that serial number doesn't look like the following, it's another fake. And even if the style of bag looks like the following, it's a good idea to have it authenticated:
This is another serial number that has been turning up with increasing regularity.
There was a post on the purse board questioning a bag with that serial number and I searched and found 1/2 dozen other posts on tPF about bags with the same number.
If a bag with that serial number doesn't look like the following, it's another fake. And even if the style of bag looks like the following, it's a good idea to have it authenticated:
Attachments
I am new to vintage coach! Can someone please help me figure out which year this bag was made. It is a leather zip legacy!
C9D-9966 also creed says made in US! Thanks so much!
C9D-9966 also creed says made in US! Thanks so much!
Welcome!
You're able to post responses to the "authenticate this Coach" thread here: http://forum.purseblog.com/coach-shopping/authenticate-this-coach-694619-11.html#post19501878
I noticed that in this page there's a recommendation to not buy from a specific seller, but is there a thread here that lists preferred sellers, as in those that are known to be reputable and honest? Just wondering as I'm not seeing one and it would be nice for people new to the site.
We don't do that any more, for a lot of reasons.
There are too many honest sellers on Ebay many of whom we've never dealt with and it's not fair to them to list just the big sellers and ignore the "little guys".
Seller ratings and opinions can change - even formerly good sellers can get lazy or greedy, and formerly lazy sellers can wake up and start doing things right. Unfortunately greed is seldom curable.
There have been too many cases of sellers registering here under an ID different from their Ebay one and then recommending themselves. We don't need that kind of BS.
You should:
ask here for authentication
Search the Forums for the seller's ID
Search http://Toolhaus.org for a complete record of the seller's Negatives and Neutrals - never just depend on Ebay's "average" because it doesn't even begin to tell the whole story.
In short - do your own research on the seller before you buy.