You guys act like people cant be unaware their item is a rep. The bags you guys are claiming fake are listed on trusted sites such as verstaire, grailed, and many others that “authenticate items”. my girlfriend refunded her and is wondering how you guys and she can tell this one is fake for future reference. I know to look for the black stitch line across top of tag as a way to tell its real, also correct serial which the bag in question had both of. I know the rivets can be diffirent from year to year as well as other features so it would be nice to understand what details exactly made this bag fake. All of ours are purchased from high rated sellers on mercari JP where a lot of authentic items come from… as well as a resell archive store located in Toronto… so if the store in Toronto sold us a fake one clearly a lot of people have no clue how to tell a real vs fake when it comes to the minor details. Id like to know what those are thank you
I'm going to try to answer your questions but it's not an easy thing to reply to.
The authenticators here have years of experience and have examined hundreds and hundreds of bags, as well as having collections of their own (we're all fairly Bal obsessed).
Many fake bags have the black thread (which, BTW, isn't on all Balenciaga styles) and the correct style code. There are nuances...is the font correct? Are the details on the tag, back of zipper head etc, correct for the year and season of the bag? A tag on an 07 bag would be different than a tag on a 2012 bag for instance. The font on the back of the zipper head has changed from time to time. Is the hardware correct for the season, year? Was the colour, type of leather, correct for the season, year? There are tons of variables.
We do realize that some sellers are unaware that they're selling inauthentic bags. There are also sellers who know that the bag they list is fake.
Our (unpaid) task here is to try to help people that want to purchase a Balenciaga but don't have the experience to tell authentic from fake. Many people in stores or resale sites lack the depth knowledge that comes from spending years examining the details that we have.
Some of the authenticators at various resale sites have only a cursory knowledge of any particular brand. How can they, when they see so many different ones?
There are stories of people returning "authentic" bags to the boutique they purchased from, only for customer service staff to realize that the authentic bag had been switched for an excellent fake.
Some staff, too, only know the current styles they're selling. There's a story of a very knowledgeable Hermes collector taking her bag to the boutique for maintenance only to be told her bag was a fake, and they were going to destroy it. The staff didn't have the depth of knowledge to know that it was a a rare bag, they hadn't been with Hermes long enough to remember that particular edition. Many of us here have had bags we've tried to sell rejected by eBay, Posh, and VC because they were old and very collectable bags that the authenticators there had never seen.
I hope this helps.
EDIT: I see
@atlantis1982 types faster than I do.
