Authenticate this COACH

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#12,256
#12,257
cmarie81 said:
I have a question for the authenticators:
I was just wondering how you guys get so knowlegable? Do you girls/guys just buy bags a lot? Do you work for coach? This is so great bringing these items to you someone who knows about these things? Do you have tips on research or articles or websites anything? If you can't say that is fine. I was just wondering how you guys can tell it is fake or real. Especially if it is an item as old as the hills or a brand spankin new item! This is great!
Also another question: I posted an item earlier that had an unknown glitter stubstance. Ive tried a warm washcloth with a little soap on it Ive tried the coach cleaner and nothing works :( It is in the zipper lining. I am not sure how to remove it. Any suggestions? or is there a link to this website I can go to for cleaning questions? thank you!
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starrymaz said:
I'm sure the other authenticators will chime in. For me, I draw on various sources: years of being a Coach fan and collector, experience being a buyer and seller, current and past items I've owned, information (files and pictures) I keep on items, old catalogs, looking at many, many Coach listings, seeing items in stores, the collective knowledge of TPFers on the Authenticate This Coach thread and in the TPF Coach forum. I've learned a lot from my fellow TPFers. ;)

The Answers to Authenticity Questions thread has a lot of valuable information and is worth reading, especially the more recent posts:
http://forum.purseblog.com/coach-shopping/answers-to-authenticity-questions-94198.html

As for getting glitter out, you may want to ask in the main Coach forum for cleaning tips:
http://forum.purseblog.com/coach/
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My experience is similar to Starry's. I've never worked for Coach but I've been buying and selling for years. I save all my own pictures as well as reference/comparison pictures from listings. I also have catalogs for reference, but most of my knowledge comes from studying listings, looking carefully at pictures, saving pictures of important details and reading posts here and on other similar forums.

And as Starry mentioned, we also learn from each other. We all have different tastes and different items in our own collections and picture files. By comparing notes, we can all teach each other.
 
#12,258
Item: Black Leather GENUINE Coach Bag
Listing number: 330535353570
Seller: melpbarn
Link: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330535353570

Comments: Additional pictures I requested below.

bb.jpg
 
#12,259
#12,264
Originally Posted by cmarie81 I have a question for the authenticators:
I was just wondering how you guys get so knowlegable? Do you girls/guys just buy bags a lot? Do you work for coach? This is so great bringing these items to you someone who knows about these things? Do you have tips on research or articles or websites anything? If you can't say that is fine. I was just wondering how you guys can tell it is fake or real. Especially if it is an item as old as the hills or a brand spankin new item! This is great!
Also another question: I posted an item earlier that had an unknown glitter stubstance. Ive tried a warm washcloth with a little soap on it Ive tried the coach cleaner and nothing works :( It is in the zipper lining. I am not sure how to remove it. Any suggestions? or is there a link to this website I can go to for cleaning questions? thank you!

starrymaz said:
I'm sure the other authenticators will chime in. For me, I draw on various sources: years of being a Coach fan and collector, experience being a buyer and seller, current and past items I've owned, information (files and pictures) I keep on items, old catalogs, looking at many, many Coach listings, seeing items in stores, the collective knowledge of TPFers on the Authenticate This Coach thread and in the TPF Coach forum. I've learned a lot from my fellow TPFers. ;)

The Answers to Authenticity Questions thread has a lot of valuable information and is worth reading, especially the more recent posts:
http://forum.purseblog.com/coach-shopping/answers-to-authenticity-questions-94198.html

As for getting glitter out, you may want to ask in the main Coach forum for cleaning tips:
http://forum.purseblog.com/coach/
Click to expand...

And my experience is similar to Starry and BeenBurned except that I'm just a buyer, not a seller. But since I've always been a "detail person" and my most recent job involved paying attention to product details and serial numbers and how to decode them, learning to do that with purses just came naturally. Since spotting my first fake Coach on Ebay from an invalid serial number (the infamous NT-4903) I've made serial numbers and creeds my specialty.

Paying close attention to the information learned from other experts is a big help. There's plenty of help here, but once upon a time Ebay's Purses Board also had an amazing group of experts who were always willing to share their expertise. Unfortunately almost all of them either left or were driven off the Board and/or Ebay.

But it's really important to be able to organize and save all that information. I try to save everything I learn in a text file, and photos of both real and fake bags are saved to a huge collection (about 4GB) of photo files, as also have about 40 or 50 older Coach catalogs.The rest comes from personal experience in actually looking at the bags. I've probably owned a total of close to 200 Coach bags although most of them have been passed on to our local resale shop and womens' shelter, so that's helped me develop a feel for the classic Coaches. Newer styles don't appeal to me like the older ones do so I leave questions about more recent Coach items to the other experts.
 
#12,267
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