AUTHENTICATE this COACH
- Thread starter greenpixie
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The "vintage" part meaning 20 years old or more is accurate, but the Bonnie Cashin claim is completely false. Any bag with that exact creed format would have been made at least 14 years AFTER Bonnie Cashin left Coach.
The style was called a Brighton Bag and was from the early 90s, probably 1991-92, style number 9895 so it's at least 17 years too old to be a Cashin-era bag and wasn't one of her designs either.
It's PROBABLY ok but the creed photo is so out of focus that it's impossible to be sure.
Item: Coach Coin Purse Key Fob Gray Satiny Leather Gathered Front
Listing number:130980899633
Seller: alicarolaynne
Link: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Coach-coin-...pt=US_Women_s_Accessories&hash=item1e7f11eb31
Comments: Could you please authenticate? Thank you!
Listing number:130980899633
Seller: alicarolaynne
Link: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Coach-coin-...pt=US_Women_s_Accessories&hash=item1e7f11eb31
Comments: Could you please authenticate? Thank you!
Do you not think it's best to leave the personal opinions out of the equation. It would seem when a potential buyer inquires about an item the answer should be an unbiased opinion concerning the item..not what you personally think about the seller. Targeting a seller & attempting to tear down a reputation should not be tolerated. While you are quite knowledgeable about this subject you are not infallible and neither are the sellers. Most are human & prone to mistakes and oversights. That does not make us all charlatans and 'terrible' sellers. Hopefully buyers have sense enough to judge the seller on his or her record and standing in the community.
Hi ladies, how do these two vintage bags look? I am thinking they are authentic, but someone correct me if I am wrong as I'm still new to Coach bags:
Item: Black court bag
Listing number: 350866736750
Seller: secondtimearound11428
Link: http://www.ebay.com/itm/350866736750?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2648
Comments: this bag seems to look slouchier than others. I am debating between this and the bag in the link below... Which seems like a better buy? This one is slouchy (I prefer more structure) but there's no real flaws but the one below seems to have fading issues (becoming a brown probably due to sun exposure?). Any opinions out there from you experts would be great! I don't mind doing a DIY fixing project if it's doable.. I don't want to get something that can't be fixed!
Item: Black court bag
Listing number: 181207934880
Seller: tlmacey
Link: http://www.ebay.com/itm/181207934880?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2648
Comments: As mentioned above, this bag has some major fading from black to a brown. Is this fixable based on coach's natural leather? I don't mind embarking on a DIY project if it indeed is fixable!
Thanks soooo much - I appreciate all the help and I know I've been posting an awful lot here >.<
Item: Black court bag
Listing number: 350866736750
Seller: secondtimearound11428
Link: http://www.ebay.com/itm/350866736750?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2648
Comments: this bag seems to look slouchier than others. I am debating between this and the bag in the link below... Which seems like a better buy? This one is slouchy (I prefer more structure) but there's no real flaws but the one below seems to have fading issues (becoming a brown probably due to sun exposure?). Any opinions out there from you experts would be great! I don't mind doing a DIY fixing project if it's doable.. I don't want to get something that can't be fixed!
Item: Black court bag
Listing number: 181207934880
Seller: tlmacey
Link: http://www.ebay.com/itm/181207934880?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2648
Comments: As mentioned above, this bag has some major fading from black to a brown. Is this fixable based on coach's natural leather? I don't mind embarking on a DIY project if it indeed is fixable!
Thanks soooo much - I appreciate all the help and I know I've been posting an awful lot here >.<
Thanks Hyacinth, I agree the creed is completely out of focus. I just don't know why sellers do that when they know buyers WANT to see the creed!
Quick question to you @Hyacinth about the creed - I've been reading some of the references on tpf to educate myself, but when looking at the creed is it just the spacing and positioning of the letters on the creed that are dead giveaways for authenticity? Are there other subtle hints? I thought that creeds were implemented by Coach at or after 1994 but I saw something with a (for example) K1C-9870, which means it was made in 1991 right? Would that mean it's fake?
Thanks @Hyacinth! Sorry I asked a few questions there but I want to get better at authenticating myself so I don't have to keep bombarding this thread :\
I think that you - or the seller mentioned, as the case may be, but I'll use "you" just to keep things simple - need to take the time to have Coach items authenticated before listing, and this problem won't occur. The problems mentioned in those listings have been mentioned in several accepted analyses of invalid/fake serial numbers and those are available to sellers and buyers both here and at Ebay.
Sellers are always welcome to ask for authenticity opinions here freely as long as they follow forum rules and don't advertise or link to their listings or stores, and by doing so can have the benefit of several opinions to help them decide whether or not a Coach item is genuine. Ebay DOES require that all items be authentic, and if a seller doesn't take steps to be sure it is by getting other opinions, or doesn't take steps to find what details point to something being fake, they're not making a strong enough effort to be sure they're selling genuine Coach products, and they run the risk of having counterfeit items removed by Ebay.
A simple understanding of Coach factory codes would have shown the seller mentioned that several of those bags weren't even close to having a valid month code. I can understand someone not knowing the plant location codes but to not know that Coach month codes only go to "M", and on very rare occasions, "N", is hard to justify. That's basic Coach knowledge for anyone who makes a living or fills a need by selling or buying Coach products. And that's NOT the kind of mistake a plant would keep making over and over to where dozens if not hundreds of bags would be leaving plants with codes like "P" or "S" that have never appeared in genuine Coaches and most of which show up in bags with other problems as well.
There's no reason a seller can't take advantage of the research that members here have already done, and there's a ton of other useful information here as well. Or they can post their own photos at Ebay's Shoes & Purses forum and still follow that forum's labyrinthine rules by declaring in the post requesting authenticity opinions that they own the bag and the photos. Or they can use a professional authentication service. Self-authenticating your own listings is only for sellers who are experienced at spotting fakes and know where to find the information that helps them do it.
As for not recommending sellers - when a seller lists 3 or 4 counterfeits in the space of a month, something's wrong. And potential buyers need to be aware that there's a risk factor buying from that seller that some of us find unacceptible, especially when it doesn't have to happen. Judging a seller "by their record" is all well and good, but when listing and selling fakes becomes part of that record, what then? Is everyone supposed to just ignore it?
Understand something clearly - NO ONE IS HERE TO HURT ANYONE'S REPUTATION. Everyone who authenticates here has gotten stuck with a fake at one time or another, and we don't want to see it happen to other people. The people in these forums who have taken the time to try and learn the subject of Coach fakes backwards and forwards do so for one simple reason - because we don't want to see anyone get ripped off, either deliberately or accidently. Even if a seller didn't realize a bag was fake, what about the buyer? Time AND money are lost since much of the time they won't be reimbursed for shipping charges if the fake has to be returned, and loss of trust in Ebay sellers in general and sometimes in the whole Ebay system. Nobody wins and everybody loses.
Both bags look authentic. I've never seen a leather bag fade from black to brown. I would steer clear of a bag with that problem. I believe the slouchier bag came be reshaped with a bath and proper stuffing.
In the creed K1C-9870, the 1 stands for 2001, not 1991. The biggest dead giveaway on authenticity are creeds that don't use the proper format, like don't have a number in the second digit, or have an improper month code is a letter in the alphabet after M. There are more subtle things like factory codes that don't match where the bag says it was made, styles that weren't made at the time that the creed date indicates, etc.
"when looking at the creed is it just the spacing and positioning of the letters on the creed that are dead giveaways for authenticity?"
Only when compared to other creeds from the same plant, month and year and that use the same creed statement. In other words, you have to compare apples and apples and they'd better be from the same tree. A creed from the early 90s will be different from one just a few years newer. A D-plant serial number from 1995 will look totally different and have different fonts, spacing, and formatting from a serial number from the same month and year but made in the G plant. Every detail has to be weighed individually, nothing in Coach products was ever the same for every item across the board. Plants had different stamps and different ways of setting them, even down to whether or not they used a dash after the "No" or the prefix.
"I thought that creeds were implemented by Coach at or after 1994 but I saw something with a (for example) K1C-9870, which means it was made in 1991 right? Would that mean it's fake?"
No, you need to re-read the information on creeds and serial numbers - single-number year codes were used from 1994 (*4*) to 2003 (*3*). As of 2004 the zero was added to the year code (*04*), and as of 2010 a 1 was used instead (*10**), So a prefix K1C- means October (K), 2001 (1), C Plant. Since Coach only started using year codes in 1994, the 0, 1, 2, and 3 codes were used for 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003.
That also means that any serial numbers with year codes of 00, 01, 02 or 03 would very likely be fake BUT there have been cases of code digits being scrambled especially in non-US plants in the mid-90s, and also of some bags made in the Costa Rica plant in 2004 that only show "4" as the year code. Every "mistake" has to be looked at individually, and we have to try and figure out if it may have been a legitimate mistake, or if something else in the bag is pointing to it just being fake.
The most consistent thing about Coach is its inconsistency.
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