Misunderstood Facts about buying on eBay

Low Prices: A low starting price should NOT be a red flag. It is a strategy of many sellers to start their items at low prices to draw interest, often as low as .99 cents and then bidders bid the item up to a high selling price. One should be wary of extremely low Buy It Now prices though. If you see a Dior Homme suit with a $200 Buy It Now price you should be suspicious and investigate further, despite the temptation to buy it before someone else does. Before buying anything it's a good idea to research similar items to see what the going rate is.

High Prices: In the same respect, a high starting price is NOT an indicator that an item is authentic. Some sellers list their fakes with high starting prices hoping people will assume they are authentic based solely on the price. Furthermore, sometimes fakes get bid up to a high price by bidders who either don't know how to spot a fake or who haven't looked closely at the auction. The bottom line is that the price of an item is NOT a reliable indicator of authenticity.

Factory Seconds: "Factory Seconds" is just a fancy way of saying fakes. The designer labels discussed in this forum do not produce lesser grade versions of their pieces to be sold as "seconds". Nor do they sell off factory defects etc, they are destroyed. Furthermore, when a seller states that there may be variations in the garment from one sold in the boutiques, it is probably fake. Although, there are a very small number of prototype preproduction pieces out there, in which the style may vary from the production pieces or be one of a kind pieces (but the quality is the same), but these only appear on eBay once in a blue moon. These are usually samples or the pieces that were worn on the actual runway. The tags of these pieces should all look the same as the production tags. However, some of the tags may not be present, such as the fabric content/ care instructions. Often times in place of this is a fabric tag with a hand written product number.