Online Thrift Pitfalls to Collectors – Beware of Fakes

It is fun to shop online thrift stores and local bargain outlets to add to our collections.  Unfortunately, there are people who take advantage of every opportunity to scam someone and one of the opportunities is presenting fake, reproduction items as authentic collectible merchandise.

I’ve found it somewhat challenging to keep track of all of the authentic vs. fake bottom stamps on many of the items I research.  If I plan to offer something for sale, I meticulously research to learn all I can about the particular piece.  Sometimes it is an impossible quest since there are so many variations of an item and the value is somewhat low.  It doesn’t justify the time and effort it would require to differentiate.  I offer items I can’t identify at a lower price and give just what I know about it in the description.  My overall rule of thumb for my own collecting is to identify why I want to have a collection of something.  In my own case it isn’t as an investment.   It is for enjoyment.  I tend to lean toward the practical so I won’t be investing large sums of money into a single piece very often so I feel a little less concern about forgeries.

In running my online thrift store it is a more serious matter since I need to be sure something I sell here is authentic or disclosed as to whether it may not be authentic.  Recently I’ve gotten the opportunity to liquidate an estate that contains a number of fake pieces of porcelain. Sadly they were represented to the original owners as authentic when they bought them.  It may even be that the seller of the items didn’t know they were fake.  The end result was the owners believed they were buying something authentic and paid very high prices expecting to one day receive at least a decent return when they needed to sell the collection.  They experienced both financial and emotional loss over the disappointment in learning they actually owned a lot of reproduction pieces.

So how do you decide what something is worth?  My rule of thumb is very simple since I don’t collect as an investment.  If I really like something and feel it is worth the price to add it to my collection strictly for enjoyment then I buy it.  If I were collecting as an investment I would do a lot of research before I spent much on an article solely because I believed it had a good chance of appreciating in value or was a perfect match of the criteria in my collection (a particular brand or material used etc).  I would make sure I knew what to look for and take substantial steps to protect myself from purchases that turn out to be forgeries.

Even the forgeries have their place.  If all you are interested in is the beauty of something the reproductions are often a great opportunity to get the look you want without the financial investment of buying originals.  We do this all the time with artwork and decorating shows that offer an inexpensive way to duplicate the work of exclusive, one-of-a-kind interior designs are big hits.  Companies have made their fortunes for ages by producing a slightly modified version of an expensive product in order to offer it at a lower price to reach a different set of buyers.

In my own case, I spell out the terms of the sale and usually offer the option of a refund.  I once offered a bronze statue.  Someone purchased it and then said he didn’t believe it was bronze.  He simply returned it and I refunded his money.  He and I split the shipping fees, I paid one way, he paid the other.  He didn’t ask for any help on the shipping charge and my usual policy doesn’t cover shipping unless I’ve done something wrong but I was concerned that the item wasn’t genuine so I met him halfway.  Since I was alarmed that the item may not be authentic and I may have missed something I did a second battery of inquiries and learned it was indeed authentic so the only harm was the passage of a little more time before the item found a new home and about $15 of lost shipping charges from both of us.  I could view the extra time I spent on it as a loss but instead I think of it more as an investment in my own skills since I now know a lot more about bronze sculptures and found a set of good resources to consult for future needs.

Here is what I’m referring to when I say it may not be worth the time and effort to uncover whether something is authentic or fake.  I spent hours researching the bronze statue.  It sold for around $100.  Having just one, purchased just for enjoyment wouldn’t justify taking hours of time to research.  If you intend to collect the entire line of these statues and authenticity is important, deep research makes much more sense and also adds to your knowledge about the items and your expertise as a collector.  If you’re only buying it because you really like it and it really adds to a design theme in a room for example, hours of research to determine authenticity becomes less important.  It is more important that you quickly find something that matched the room theme and looks good.  As a reseller, I find value in researching deeply so I can educate myself as a credible merchant so I’ll go to extraordinary lengths even for small items.

As a result I accumulate a lot of resources. I share them in the collectors resources section of this blog.  Here I offer links to places I’ve found online that have helped me identify things and gain some insight in what to look for in the fakes and reproductions.  The first thing you should do is thoroughly examine the items you intend to collect.  You can visit shows, stores, websites, etc. to gather information about the items you collect.  Familiarity is the best insulation against trickery.  Often sellers don’t intend to trick someone or misrepresent something, it is just a product of not having expertise in an area.  The best bargains are found in this setting so I don’t recommend avoiding them, instead protect yourself by knowing all about the objects you intend to collect.

One of the best places I’ve found for learning about collectibles is eBay.  Not the shopping sections, but the guides put there by online sellers.  People like me, who have years of experience buying and selling collectibles.  Some of them have focused  on one particular arena and have taken the time to share what they know.  Many of the links in my resources area will be taking you to eBay guides.

The bottom line is understanding that mistakes will sometimes happen and you should only invest as much as you can afford to lose on something you cannot verify as genuine.  We all are willing to pay more for some things than others based on many criteria other than who created the item and whether or not it will be valuable later.  It is just important to make sure your goals meet the risk.  That is, don’t spend a fortune on an object you know little about with the hopes of turning around and selling it for a profit down the line without a reasonable education.

Consider the limits of the environment where the purchase is being made.  Buying at online thrift stores, estate sales, garage sales and the like offer opportunities for incredible money savings because they aren’t specialized operations.  You can expect to pay a little bit less in these settings because they aren’t specialized.  With that opportunity for a bargain goes a little bit of risk that the item isn’t all that it appears to be so you guard against it with a return policy.  Online thrift stores and other established businesses are often a better option since many offer a refund after you’ve had a chance to take the item and examine it more closely.  This is not the case at a garage sale or estate sale setting and often not in brick and mortar businesses in your town so expect the price to match the risk you assume in buying something.  The price should get lower as the burden shifts more to you.

For example, there is a large thrift store chain that operates where I live that has a strict return policy that doesn’t offer near the latitude that I offer in my online thrift store.  It doesn’t mean they are bad or that no one should shop there.  It is just a function of volume.  They have truckloads of goods coming in and they can’t possibly hire the kind of staff it would take to analyze this kind of detail and still offer very low prices, so they don’t.  They just put it out there for very low prices and it’s on the buyer to do the analysis.

Shopping in a brick and mortar thrift store offers other pitfalls in exchange for the lower price.  Time, you have to search endlessly to find something specific.  Online thrift stores present the opportunity to search but you may miss something quite valuable because someone didn’t know what it was and offered it by an unexpected name.  All shopping venues have their advantages and disadvantages and prices should be evaluated accordingly.

At the end it is mostly a common sense relationship to cost and time invested by a seller.  You should expect to pay less when the burden falls more on you to determine whether something is the genuine article and you have no means of returning the item.  You should expect to pay full market value for an item that offers plenty of protection against fakes and forgeries in the form of guarantees and generous return policies.  The prices are somewhere in between in venues like mine where there isn’t one specialty but a lot of effort is made to represent things correctly and give some protection against fakes by offering a refund window that gives you a little time to examine the item closely and decide if it is worth the price paid.