I guessed the bigger looking nike bag was the fake and I was right.

so... the duracell batteries with the pink bunny on them are real?

Well it also had a different expiry date.

Go look, every battery in the world will have the same expiry date.

well that was quite lame.

Hmmm....one Nike bag has a thicker string and costs $85, the other has a thinner string and costs $9.99. (i pulled these prices out of my butt, but they're likely close).

I'll take the one with the thin string.

I bet it's much easier to tell these things apart when you can feel their heft and construction, as opposed to trying to tell them apart when all you have to go on is a poorly photographed slideshow.

People still care about brands? I've spent too long as an academic, everyone in my ivory tower wears stuff from Giant Tiger or thrift stores.

The fake shoe looked a lot better than the actual one.
I applaud the people who make the fake version of popular stuff. Especially if it looks just like the real thing. Overpriced brands really almost deserve it.

Rolux : Rolex :: or : of


Or. Of's cheap imitation?

hyperspacemonkey: People still care about brands? I've spent too long as an academic, everyone in my ivory tower wears stuff from Giant Tiger or thrift stores.



Don't act so surprised, your highness...

subby,

You saying I didnt get a genuine Rolux?

The battery one was easy.

The two on the left had the same package graphics, the one of the left did not.

Were those pictures taken by a fake photographer? They suck, especially when you are trying to actually see differences in product. The overexposed batteries one followed by the blurry "real" battery package makes it a little hard to tell.

Am I the real ME or am I an ALT?

One of my students - a girl in high school - impressed her friends with an LV bag.
I had to ask. I simply did not know if they were saying, "L.V." or "Elvi"...or what the fark any of it meant.
Turns out to be Louis Vuitton...or something.
Anyway. It was a medium weight canvas bag. Maybe $3 worth of material and a little bit of stitching.
What's the big deal?
Turns out the big deal is that THIS canvas tote bag cost about $4000 US. It has the letters L and V silk screened on the sides really big so everyone can see that you were stupid enough to drop four grand on a canvas tote bag.
Later that same night I saw the same bag for sale in the night market. $200 NT - about $6 US.
I don't know whether the kid's bag was authentic or not. And I resisted the urge to buy every night market bag I could lay hands on and give everyone in the class their very own "LV" bag.
Last week I walked past a "real" Louis Vuitton store. They do, in fact, make that bag. I'm dying to know what the difference really is. Must be the finest Corinthian canvas.

subby apparently has issues spelling RoluxROLEX


Know the difference between the two...Though I have a feeling if you were to buy a Rolux, it'd look a lot like this




Both the watch and the man so full of FAIL

As a pawnbroker, I always assumed a watch was a "Foolex" unless it came with matching box, papers, and receipt.

/Had one that I thought was real and wore it around for awhile.
//Nobody was impressed.
///Seriously, not one comment.
////Buy a Timex

tatum: Last week I walked past a "real" Louis Vuitton store. They do, in fact, make that bag. I'm dying to know what the difference really is. Must be the finest Corinthian canvas.

The Wall Street Journal once had a bunch of experts trying to determine what was fake and what real for some commonly counterfeited products. Particularly the bags it was practically impossible. I think in one case the stitching was slightly different. But everything else was the same.

Of course it's impossible that the Chinese factories making this stuff don't divert some of it to sell on the black market for their own profit.

Max Edison: As a pawnbroker, I always assumed a watch was a "Foolex" unless it came with matching box, papers, and receipt.

/Had one that I thought was real and wore it around for awhile.
//Nobody was impressed.
///Seriously, not one comment.
////Buy a Timex

I have a Rolex my parents bought for me as a graduation gift. Saved all the paperwork, bc Im obsessive like that. It's gonna come in handy when I have to pawn it off for cash once I lose my damn job.
/never wear it anyway
//sits in a safe in my apartment

hicksfa2: subby apparently has issues spelling RoluxROLEX

nevermind. you're not going to get it anyway.

Laugh, actually got them all right. The Nike shoes one was easy -- which shoe would Nike be more likely to make, a flashy glossy one, or some shiatty boring one? Obviously the flashy one.

The bags were easy too -- the one on the right looks more lucid, the one on the left looks like a completely different material, very non-flexible. I didn't notice the rope thing they mentioned, but I just went with the difference in material and got it right.

The batteries were quite difficult though. I ultimately went with the ones on the left being real due to the "Plus" sign underneath the brand name. It's all shiny and flashy whereas the one next to it is boring as shiat.

Farktastic: Were those pictures taken by a fake photographer? They suck, especially when you are trying to actually see differences in product. The overexposed batteries one

The batteries are not overexposed,

The plastic is just reflecting light (probably from the camera flash)

/needs a diffuser and an offshoe mount

highwayrun: I bet it's much easier to tell these things apart when you can feel their heft and construction

Sometimes.

But how are you going to tell the difference between "genuine" goods produced in China, and the "fake" ones produced in the factory next door with the same specs and same materials?

Approves:

My wife takes pride in her genuine Praba, Cough, and Pucci purses.

Some of the better fakes of very expensive (i.e. >$10,000) wristwatches, such as the IWC Aquatimer Cousteau, are priced at over $1000 and people DO pay it. For a FAKE. It's pretty amazing.

opiumpoopy: highwayrun: I bet it's much easier to tell these things apart when you can feel their heft and construction

Sometimes.

But how are you going to tell the difference between "genuine" goods produced in China, and the "fake" ones produced in the factory next door with the same specs and same materials?

Quite often, the items are produced in the same factory, by the same workers using the same materials. I mean how would a company know if the factory made 200,000 items or 220,000?

loonatic112358: considering I have a Rolex, i'd say the real one moves smoothly, and doesn't tick. Also, the name isn't in big bold letters, and the logo is on the band, and there's a holgram on the back. my wifes fake rolex she bought in mexico($20 usd), it looks like a timex that had the face changed out to say rolex.

/pretty sure with the right tools a good fake rolex could be made, but then wouldn't your production costs be very similar to the real thing?

Some of the fake Rolexes out there can run over a grand, and it's next to impossible to tell the difference. Clearly, taking off the back to inspect the movement is a giveaway, but most of the time the premium fakes are perfect except that.

My girlfriend bought me an obviously fake Rolex during her trip to China. I'm ashamed that she spent a whole $20 on that thing.

/nice watch
//paint's already chipping off, though...

Max Edison: As a pawnbroker, I always assumed a watch was a "Foolex" unless it came with matching box, papers, and receipt.

/Had one that I thought was real and wore it around for awhile.
//Nobody was impressed.
///Seriously, not one comment.
////Buy a Timex


Not a fake watch, it is a genuine Chinese mechanical watch.

I have gotten several comments on this watch, so I would prefer this $100 watch that you can get at Wal-Mart (It IS a Chinese watch) to a Rolex for general wearing.

bionicjoe: Tofino: My wife takes pride in her genuine Praba, Cough, and Pucci purses.

Know a guy that bought 1000 fake purses on eBay and is now using every woman he knows to start 'purse parties'.

Good idea really. My wife's family has done a couple of those and everyone goes away happy with a $20 genuine faux purse or two. The main problem is wife realizes a day later that she simply does not have a single pair of shoes which she could possibly wear with the new purse...

loonatic112358: /pretty sure with the right tools a good fake rolex could be made, but then wouldn't your production costs be very similar to the real thing?


Yeah, and it would STILL be cheap. You're paying for brand identity and advertising, not quality. Not to say quality doesn't have a premium attached, it doesn't account for a clear majority of the price.

loonatic112358: $10, for that? where did they come from?

With modern manufacturing, and cheap labor from a third-world country, you could EASILY make a clone of a Rolex for $10. I mean, it's just a watch. The cost of the materials is *tiny*, and precision watchmaking isn't exactly hard to do these days, and most of it is can be easily automated. Basically, Rolex watches are VASTLY overpriced for what they are.

There is a pervasive idea in our society that "hand made = better", but it really isn't true for most things. Machines do a better job with almost any product of any complexity. Hand-made is only better when the product needs to be custom fit to an individual.

Honestly I have no problem buying "fakes", it's all the same crap any way.

When I was stationed in Korea you could go shopping outside the base for any brand of clothes that you wanted, they would just sew on a tag for whatever you wanted.

kittyhas1000legs: so... the duracell batteries with the pink bunny on them are real?

The Duracell bunny is actually the original battery selling bunny.

The Energizer Bunny was created as a parody.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duracell_Bunny

loonatic112358: Timmy the Tumor: Sword and Shield: loonatic112358: considering I have a Rolex, i'd say the real one moves smoothly, and doesn't tick. Also, the name isn't in big bold letters, and the logo is on the band, and there's a holgram on the back. my wifes fake rolex she bought in mexico($20 usd), it looks like a timex that had the face changed out to say rolex.

/pretty sure with the right tools a good fake rolex could be made, but then wouldn't your production costs be very similar to the real thing?

Some of the fake Rolexes out there can run over a grand, and it's next to impossible to tell the difference. Clearly, taking off the back to inspect the movement is a giveaway, but most of the time the premium fakes are perfect except that.


holograms and smooth movement instead of "ticking" isn't a guarantee that "it's a real Rolex" anymore, I worked a case a couple years ago, we seized about 10,000 fake rolexes that had holograms, band logos and smooth movements, the group that brought them into the US had paid $10 each for them and were selling them for $1000.

$10, for that? where did they come from?

but, yes anything can be faked,

They're probably from mainland China. Most of the fake Rolexes out there are.

Meh,I bought a fake Nokia for about 180 quid - I was totally ripped off. It looks exactly identical to the real thing; nice 5mp camera, CarlZeiss lens, 8Gb card, slide feature, V-Gage thingy etc, until you try to add more than 2 albums of music to it.

The quality of copies from China is getting good enough to make ebay redundant.

OTOH I have a couple of hundred Gb of media for free, but I've only spent about 1500 quid on music and dvds.

From my experience in Chinatown, the difference in an authentic Rolex and a fake is the fake will last for two days. That $35 my boss spent on it didn't seem so cheap then.

On a fake Rolex you can see the big hand is on 12 and the little hand is in-between a hour.