tintin.ch

nov/2011: many collectors who have an own website or facebook-site got hit by a guy called sebastian (or seba) from chile these days. he is offering sadus picks for trading.
his faked picks have a much smaller sadus band logo than the original picks from the band and they are very thin celluloid-picks of low quality. the shape looks pretty strange with a flat top edge and a weirdly pointed tip. as far as I know, there are picks with band logos on one or both sides but no signature. just keep your hands off this crap and ignore his requests.


fakes			original

regrettably many racketeers overstocked the market with more or less dumpy fakes. it is recommended to strictly keep your hands off those cheap knock-offs even if they are sold for $1 or less on ebay. as long as there are still some foolish buyers there will be produced and sold thousands of fakes through ebay in the usa, great britain and germany.
you can see from a distance that this worthless junk with its cheap printing doesn't come from the bands and there are mostly offered picks from famous top-selling bands like metallica, kiss, ac/dc, rolling stones and many more.

hundreds of these metallica pick left above (fake) were sold on ebay by several sellers. you discover them easily with their meanly made border. you hardly ever find such unaware work at original dunlop tortex picks like metallica use them on stage.

you're also able to tell something by the smaller and worse printed signatures of these faked st.anger tour picks. the raw material is the same as the producers used for the rolling stones fakes (see below). that's why they may come from the same faker.

another example of cheating metallica fans on ebay:

the seller "rare music memorabilia" offers complete sets of faked metallica city picks from the death magnetic tour. as the original city picks are very rare, this must be a profitable business. to date i never got any answer on my question why he's not calling himself "faked music memorabilia".

the last fake of metallica picks i want to show is a batch of 5 different picks each offered for $9.99 on ebay. they are made so crappy that it's not worth to tell a word about. but the funny thing about this rubbish is the question and answer seen at the ebay auction (original excerpt):
question: hello my name is mario i was wondering are these metallica guitar picks tour issued for the bands themselves or are they commemorative? thanks
the answer by seller mrbob01:
hi, i'm not really sure, these were purchased from a roadie who traded another roadie for these. he didn't know where these originally came from? that's why I didn't say they were tour picks. anyway they are cool looking picks. good luck!

these absurd excuses about roadies who reputedly are trading picks (why should they...?) by the seller are about this crap:

there's hardly any metallica guitar pick which was not faked and offered on ebay once...

there are only small details to discern a fake. there are many different variations of eddies signature. there are some with "f.u.c.k." or a trademark sign underneath. there are even some picks from the balance tour with the same signature as used on the f.u.c.k. tour but with retouched "f.u.c.k." the faker who made this crap is a chinese who lives in the usa. he has made some very similar looking fakes of paul stanley and ritchie blackmore picks. buying this pick is even in breach with law about protection of species as it is made of real tortoise (what else do you expect from a chinese).

other sellers earned unexpected money because van halen sold some stash tins filled with eddie van halen picks on their website. these herco picks look similar to the picks eddie used on 2008 tour, but without the band name and the year. until some sellers did notice the scam some of those picks have been sold for $40 and more..

the pick above was offered on ebay as a real slayer tour pick from the rain in pain tour 1987. in fact it is not a fake but a merch pick that came from the bands homepage. in my opinion this cheating is not too serious but it was offered by falsehood anyway. see the original tour picks with jeff hannemans signature on the back from the rain in pain tour below:

angus young photo pick: in the meantime there are offered much more faked angus photo picks than original picks from the black ice tour 08/09. thousands of them were produced and sold for up to $25. you can easily recognize them by the display details, the shiny surface and the uncommon shape of the pick. by the way: there exist some real picks with brian johnson and phil rudd picture. only one bunch was made more or less as a joke or gift from the rest of the band. as these picks reach prices of more than $100.- on ebay, it's only a matter of time until some copies will be made.

new fakes of def leppard picks (offered by seller rare music memorabilia):

the same seller also offers the following megadeth picks:

as all members of megadeth only use dunlop tortex picks since the band exists, these fakes are quite easy to identify.

beware: plentiful new fakes on ebay!!! the seller god_of_picks from sydney, australia is offering thousands of faked picks from bands like def leppard, black label society, poison, judas priest, aerosmith, limp bizkit, slipknot, led zeppelin, bon jovi, slayer, nickelback, blink 182, black sabbath, foo fighters, pantera and others.

i advise not to buy any picks from god_of_picks. it's all homemade crap which has nothing to do with these bands. a few examples of the fakes he's offering:

80% - 90% of the picks sold on ebay are fakes. please do not believe every word these sellers say. even words like "authentic", "tour used", "stage used" and "original" do not prove the honesty of a seller. beware of sellers who answer evasively like "i don't remember who i got it from...", "...and i think it should be authentic". recommended sellers always know where their material comes from and if they don't do they're not recommendable!

last but not least a few words about faked autographs. approximately 80% of the autographs offered on ebay are fakes and nearly 100% of the autographs from megastars like madonna are faked. it is an easy way to make quick money indead.

as an example please have a look at this autograph from kiss which has been sold on ebay. it's not faked too meanly. but if you compare it with the original autographs on the right which was obtained at tower records nyc, you can see that the signatures are written doubtfully and wiggly. tommy thayer's signature definitely tells the truth about the origin of this item.

fake (sold on ebay) authentic (obtained at tower records nyc)

this autographed motley crue item has been offered on ebay as well. maybe the nikki sixx and tommy lee signatures look somewhat like similar to the originals but the other signatures of mick mars and vince neil are definitely faked in a stuporous way.

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top 10 of the worst faked autographs sold on ebay:

#10: