Thanks for your reply. I appreciate all the info and will check by for a response from Hyacinth.
I think all the pertinent details have already been mentioned.
Serial numbers are the strongest indicator of fakes, once we've established enough of a database to say for sure that a certan number or prefix is "always fake". And in this case I believe we have. The serious danger of someone who's not an expert trying to self-authenticate her own bags, like the photos BeenBurned posted as examples, should be obvious. If a seller isn't going to follow the Fakes Lists here and Daria48's list at Ebay AND the posts in this thread and in the Answer to Authenticity Questions thread pinned at the top of the
Coach Shopping forum, THEY'RE GOING TO MAKE MISTAKES.
Both BeenBurned and I have been tracking and analyzing serial numbers for at least 10 years. We've saved and compared photos and known production histories and are in a much better position than almost any seller I know to figure out which numbers are real and which aren't. We post our finds and usually a TON of photographic evidence here in these forums for anyone to see and use and we're always willing to answer questions about our statements.
And while there have been some close fakes with the J8Y- prefix, the number of fakes we've found with EXACTLY the same serial number font and creed details, combined with a few small but important mistakes in the bags in question, make naming that prefix as always fake a decision that I personally felt it was time to make. The fake turnlock on the bag in question provided additional evidence, along with the fact that the stitching, both in length and spacing as well as its color, wasn't quite right either. The bag has since been removed but I remember the stitching - after 10 years and looking at literally tens of thousands of photos, spotting it is pretty easy.
You can accept it or not, but experience and a vast photo and text library (BeenBurned, Whateve and I all have one) counts for more than even a seller's experience in these cases. The common method of spotting fakes ten years ago was "the stitching is uneven" and that was all. Every bit of evidence that's been accumulated, saved, analyzed and catalogued since then has been done in large part by the Coach experts who used to post at Ebay's Shoes Purses and Accessories forum and a small number of those experts who now post on this board, including the Fake Serial Numbers List here at tPF and the basic carved-in-stone Rules like "Coach has never made purses in Korea".
Sellers who want to avoid selling fakes even accidently need to accept that someone has done a LOT more research than most sellers could ever have the time, energy or skill to do themselves. If they don't take advantage of all that information, that's their decision, and it can end up being an expensive mistake.
BTW, the Fakes List at tPF is here - four consecutive posts, and quite a few updates as follow-up posts in the same thread, up to the present. Updates to the list will usually have a post title in Bold or Caps to make them easier to find..
http://forum.purseblog.com/coach-sh...enticity-questions-94198-72.html#post26447774
and the next 3 posts
