answers to AUTHENTICITY questions!!!
- Thread starter kallison
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*4N- Serial Prefixes
ALWAYS assume that any serial number beginning with ANY letter followed by 4N-**** is fake. Most of them will also have incorrect style numbers.
M4N-4154 and J4N-4082 are already on the Lists but we need to expand it to cover the entire range of *4N- prefixes, regardless of what style number follows. Ask at the Authenticate This Coach (ATC) thread if there's any question.
ALWAYS assume that any serial number beginning with ANY letter followed by 4N-**** is fake. Most of them will also have incorrect style numbers.
M4N-4154 and J4N-4082 are already on the Lists but we need to expand it to cover the entire range of *4N- prefixes, regardless of what style number follows. Ask at the Authenticate This Coach (ATC) thread if there's any question.
I've never seen Coach put a stamp on the side of flap before: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-COA...4128556?hash=item43eaebc42c:g:w20AAOSwr7ZW35H- Is it authentic? I can't see the creed, and the number given by the seller gives me a Sonoma bucket under new search: P7B 4907 Seller: welikeshoppin
Any time that "Coach" stamp with a smaller "New York" underneath it is off-center or far away from the edge of the bag it's a very safe bet that it's fake. Coach only used that stamp on a few style lines. The more times the Coach name is shoved in your face, the more careful you need to be. It has indentations on the back plate of the turnlock too, another red flag. And an always-fake invalid month code.
There's another big problem with that one too and it's a really good example of what we mean when we talk about stretch-marked or "elephant-skin" leather. Those long almost parallel wrinkles are a MAJOR red flag. While some streching and marks are normal in areas of leather bags that are under a lot of stress and where the leather can stretch out from the weight of the bag's contents such as the bottom corners, marks like in these photos are NEVER normal, almost all of them are in places where the leather shouldn't be stressed or stretched at all.
My guess is that those strech marks may be from over-stretching the leather to soften it but I think it's definitely some sort of over-processing problem. If you see stretch marks that make it look like the bag just gave birth to triplets, have it authenticated in the ATC thread immediately.
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Thanks, Hyacinth. I just didn't want to post it to the Hall of Shame without being 100% positive. Besides, someone else did it while I posted it here.
Another thing to note is the double back pocket, or is it a seam and a pocket? That is something that Dooney did, I believe, not Coach. Counterfeiters often blend ideas from more than one manufacturer.
Yes, that back pocket is really strange. The whole bag is a stylistic mess but that back pocket opening is something I've never seen on a Coach before.
While going through my photo files I found another fake with that wonky back pocket, and a fake serial number H4B-0517.
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See the resemblance to the Dooney bag in this post?
http://forum.purseblog.com/showpost.php?p=29956299&postcount=10847
Yes, I love those mongrel fakes that can't decide which of their "parents" they want to look like. Here's a 7H-7456 serial number "Coach" that wants to be an LV:
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Every time I see the straps of a "new Coach bag" wrapped in plastic, I'm wondering why the makers of those creatures haven't learned one simple thing by now - to wrap them in paper, like Coach does. Sometimes, when I'm scrolling through thumbnails of eBay listings and they're too small to show the details, that's actually the only thing that tells them apart from the rest of bags.