Playability/Durability of 'eBay jerseys'

[Sang Han Lee]

Good points you bring up asprillialim, especially that last one about new jerseys coming out every couple of years. I think it's the case that the fakes are also getting better with each generation, and it is becoming very hard to tell them apart from the real deal.

[somnambulist]

Good points you bring up asprillialim, especially that last one about new jerseys coming out every couple of years. I think it's the case that the fakes are also getting better with each generation, and it is becoming very hard to tell them apart from the real deal.

Honestly, I think it's still quite easy. Paying no attention to the location of the seller/item, there are always visible flaws in each of the pictures of the jersey. It's never hard to tell, even now, which jerseys are fake and which aren't. The manufacturers of the fake jerseys will never dedicate the time and effort to making them look convincing, as that would take too much money and eat up their profit.

[asprillialim]

Honestly, I think it's still quite easy. Paying no attention to the location of the seller/item, there are always visible flaws in each of the pictures of the jersey. It's never hard to tell, even now, which jerseys are fake and which aren't. The manufacturers of the fake jerseys will never dedicate the time and effort to making them look convincing, as that would take too much money and eat up their profit.

Not excatly right! I'm able to get fake jersey which almost looks like real, which I can say 80% identical like the real jersey. Most of the fake jersey sellers wouldn't put up close pictures for you, as they tried to fool you, how would they be stupid enough to let you see close up pictures. I even heard that some of the manufactures in China, they are the authorized manufactures to manufacture jerseys, handbags, shoes and etc for various of branded name. So, they often produces "extra" in the after work hours. Therefore, they could sell out by themselves. But basically, these products have no inner tags or probably something a bit different than the original authentic jersey. It is because they try to avoid to be identified.

Despite from that, very beware of rejected jerseys on the market. Sometimes, they have stiching problems or displaced badged or whatever. But the seller never mention it. I had once bought several rejected jerseys of Italy national team (I'm a collector of Italy national team jerseys, and I have more than 300 jerseys now), one of it is very special, I'm not sure whether it is really rejected or the manufacturer didn't notice about it. It was a white away Italy national team jersey, it suppose to have three Puma logos. One on the right shoulder, one of the left arm and one on the left chest. The one that I got have no left chest Puma logo. Other than that, everything is authentic. I checked everything and compare with my other Italy away jersey (as I collected couple of same jersey because some of these jerseys produced in different country, and different country manufacturer produced jersey with different stiching lining color, material and etc.)

Talking about different country manufacturer. The Italy four stars jersey that had the same design like the world cup version but just have four stars in the middle crest. The one that made in Turkey are different than the one that made in Paraguay, Romania and Thailand. The one that made in Turkey's material is like polyester that we often use to play for soccer or the jersey with material that we always be able to buy from any jersey that in the retail store, it is highly elastic. But, the one that made from other countries are polyester too but not elastic at all. And the Romania's made has different lining and stiching. And there are so many I can talk about that version of jersey.

If I didn't study about it, I don't even know and probably I thought it was a fake as well. Maybe you still haven't go through that phase yet, if one day you find that your France jersey that made in couple of different countries and you really study them well, then you know there are always some differences, if you don't know in the first place, you might think that it is fake jersey. Trust me, go and look for the same version of France jersey you have now but made in different countries.

One more last example, 1998 Nike Italy home jersey. There was two different country manufactures, one is El Salvador and the other one is UK. The inner size label looks different, the material is different too. The El Salvador is very bad quality and itches me all the time, but the UK's made is so smooth and soft. And about this 1998 Italy home and away jerseys, even the one made in UK has different version. One has a tag said "NikeFit", another version is "Dri Fit". Despite from that, on the left bottom, there was a description tag on the jersey. There are two versions as well, one is with long description on it, but the other one is with short description. So, can you tell me which one is fake and which one is authentic. The answer is both are authentic.

So, if you saying not to study them and you can easily identify which is fake and which is authentic. I won't say you are wrong, but I can say that sometimes you may mistaken thought the authentic is fake, and probably it is one of those limited edition or very rare to bee seen again on the market or ebay. When you eventually know about it, probably that jersey already gone for a long time and you may not seen it for years to come.

[flicktokick]

This website is all about fake goods. It's supposed to be a company that makes fake stuff (they're called SnideUK (http://www.snideuk.org)) but all the posts are laced with jokes.

They just put up a couple of posts about making fake football shirts with accompanying jokey videos - Chelsea 'not worth the money', Liverpool 'fourth rate' Their videos are on youtube.

http://snideuk.typepad.com/snideuk/2008/08/the-new-footie-season-first-half.html

http://snideuk.typepad.com/snideuk/2008/08/the-new-footie-season-second-half.html

[Kot Matroskin]

Watch out for things like this:

http://us.st12.yimg.com/us.st.yimg.com/I/yhst-78507158105148_2026_751507991

Oh, wait, this is from the Big Soccer store... :eek:

[actusreus13]

Cool and a very informative thread and I thought I'd throw in my 2 cents. I've bought fakes twice from e-bay and my experience is 50-50. I bought a white Adidas long sleeve Liverpool Torres jersey for $53 plus $10 shipping. I assumed it was fake and it is. It came with original (authentic) swing tags with the plastic stem but they were not actually attached to the shirt. Also, the bottom inside tag was not the Adidas tag with country flags but some generic tag. I'm sure there is more but since I've never seen an authentic equivalent to my jersey (except pics of Torres wearing it and it looks identical except for the climacool rather then formotion stamp), I cannot say. But even though fake, the jersey looks awesome, feels and fits awesome and has held up with no problem whatsoever. The printing shows no sign of wear and tear and neither does the stitching and I bought it in May. I recently bought an authentic white Roma jersey by Kappa directly from the official Kappa store for 70 Euros and the blue swoosh under the WIND logo is coming off so go figure.

My other experience was just a few weeks ago with a long sleeve Real Madrid Sneijder jersey. It was $22 plus $15 shipping from Malaysia and it looked incredible in the pictures. The seller actually responded to my e-mail asking to switch the jersey (I wanted a different player). But it all went downhill from there. I never got it and about a week later the seller was no longer registered, and the jersey listing was removed from e-bay which is always a bad sign. PayPal refunded the $37 back to my account after a few weeks but I was pissed as I was really looking forward to having that jersey. Btw, the seller had a 100% satisfaction rating so that's not fool proof either.

[Kot Matroskin]

My other experience was just a few weeks ago with a long sleeve Real Madrid Sneijder jersey. It was $22 plus $15 shipping from Malaysia and it looked incredible in the pictures. The seller actually responded to my e-mail asking to switch the jersey (I wanted a different player). But it all went downhill from there. I never got it and about a week later the seller was no longer registered, and the jersey listing was removed from e-bay which is always a bad sign. PayPal refunded the $37 back to my account after a few weeks but I was pissed as I was really looking forward to having that jersey. Btw, the seller had a 100% satisfaction rating so that's not fool proof either.


That happened to me once, too. I guess those guys have to disappear sometimes and if you've got an order in process when they do, you're out of luck.

I've got 3 good fakes, 3 poor ones (look good, fit ok, but lettering coming off), and 3 official replicas. Now that I've got a collection started, I'll probably never buy a fake one again. I'm just going to save the money and buy real ones from now on.

[actusreus13]

I agree. Between worrying about whether it is a "good" or "bad" fake and whether it will even come at all, I think it's just better to spend the extra $30-$40 and have the peace of mind throughout the process plus an authentic jersey in the end.