Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Zipper
To play devil's advocate, replicas can help fans on a budget build a display. But, IMO replicas should be indelibly marked.
It was my understanding that replica coins had to be marked by law... otherwise it is a counterfeit.  |
I wholeheartedly agree with the marking of replicas as such. There will always be those unscrupulous sellers though who either remove the marking or photograph in such a way that it doesn't show and then conveniently leave out words like "original" from their description. So when they're selling a "Babe Ruth Autograph Baseball," well, technically it is a baseball that displays a Babe Ruth autograph on one panel. The seller's feedback usually won't stand up to too many dupes like that, it happens in all areas of collecting, but if the items are marked as replicas, the marking (or scratched-out remainder thereof) should at least raise the necessary red flags for the buyer.
In David's defense on this Ruth ball issue, as Brandon pointed out previously the
counterfeiter replicator only needs a photograph of a real signed ball to go from, which means that all it took was one case of David showing off his ball in a public forum with a nice, large, close-up photo of it, and the
counterfeiter artist who produces these has all the ammo he needs.