joe randel's art dump

Have you ever bought an item on auction thinking you where getting the genuine item only to find out that it was counterfeit?  I have.  I remember looking for Mega Man Zero 1, 2 and 3 for GameBoy Advance back in the early 2000’s.  I found an auction for the games on Ebay and so I bid… and won.  I was so happy to finally get them, but I did find them to be a bit strange.  The colour of the cartridges to be a darker grey and they fit slightly more snug then a normal cart.  A few weeks later I was mentioning this to my wife and she noticed the it said “Nintondo” on the back of it.  I was floored.  I couldn’t believe I had been taken so easily.  Mind you the games worked fine… mostly.  Years later I discovered I couldn’t save a game past the second slot.  I learned my lesson on buying games of Ebay with that purchase.  Although I do wonder why they didn’t just put Nintendo on the back of the game.  They where all ready ripping them off so they might as well go the extra distance to make it a “perfect” fake.

We’ve discovered other fake things off Ebay in the past few years.  We’ve recently bought bootleg Disney pins and movies too without realizing it until it’s too late.  Although now we notify Ebay and get our money back when we can.  Although now we buy artisan crafts and things you can’t really counterfeit.  That or we just stay away from on-line auctions in general.

Does it bother you to have a fake version of something or are you just as happy with it as long as it works properly?