Sorry for double-posting:
Hi folks, I'm new here. I just discovered this forum and since I'm a long time fan of NEC's litte wondermachine, I chose to register. After looking around a bit I found this topic.
I'm very sorry I didn't come here earlier so I could have warned you: The copies of Sapphire which that guy sold on ebay are indeed counterfeits.
They were made around mid 2001; not '99 or 2000 as this scammer writes on his page. I was in Tokyo at that time and I am pretty sure there were NO fake Sapphires then.
The people who made them (most likely in Asia) did not have access to Hudson's original printing templates, so they had to use an original copy as "master" which they scanned. Since the original was printed using the offset printing method, the colored parts consist of tiny little dots, while black lines are very sharp. When reprinting it from the scans, this could not be duplicated, of course. That's why the counterfeits are slightly blurred / out of focus. When you look closer, you'll also notice that the colors don't quite match: All parts that are yellow in the original are almost orange in the copy (for instance the katakana writing), the purple vest of the girl on the cover is blue in the counterfeit.
Another thing the fraudsters didn't manage to replicate exactly is the factory seal's tear strip: The original was approximately 0.5cm from the bottom while theirs is higher up in the middle of the katakana letters. Maybe their equipment couldn't do it or maybe they had no original sealed copy for reference. Another thing they simply _could_not_ copy is the serial number on the inner ring of the original CD, which is identical for all original copies.
Those counterfeits were produced for one purpose only: To scam unsuspecting collectors out of a lot of money. Of course this only worked for a short time (until it became known that counterfeits were out there).
I had a good laugh when reading that German scammer's website
http://sapphire.anime4ever.de/"Alternative copies" - what a funny euphemism. Basically all he writes there is complete bullsh*t. Why would a game copany issue a second print run to keep prices down on the secondary market?? Hudson never did such a thing, and not a single shop in Tokyo claims they did. This is, plain and simple, a lie.
Too bad so many of you fell for this. I contacted ebay about the counterfeits several times, they chose not react (just as usual). The guy who sold the counterfeits on ebay (ebay name asian_dvd_classics) knew full well he was selling bootlegs - that's why his auctions were set to "private"; that way the people who bought the fakes couldn't even be warned. You may think that $60 for a nicely made replica isn't a bad price... I'm sure it wasn't for asian_dvd_classics who paid considerably less when he purchased a box full somewhere in Asia and made some $10000 selling them during the past 3 months. I for one think that even $5 is too much for a bootleg. I also think that he is a criminal who should be prosecuted and punished to the full extent. Anyone here know his real name?
Topic: Sapphire for less than $30? Sealed? (Read 425 times)
