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why do you need to have reproduction Speedo pads on your bike if you can't find affordable originals?

why do you need to have reproduction SE cruiser bars on your bike if you can't find affordable originals?

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repops kill the "coolness" factor. when i first saw Speedo pads on Ed Porter's bikes i thought "wow! those are cool!" then i tried to find a set. took me 3 years. i notice when guys come over my house, most mention the set of Speedo pads on my G-Boy - "wow! those are cool!"

well... they won't be so cool anymore. that stinks.

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What Civil War enthusiast hasn't, at one time or another, held a "miniball" in their hand, and thought back to what it saw. So harmless now, these lead slugs had one official purpose in the 1860's. Now days, entire collections are based on the many types and variations of the bullets used during the Civil War.

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why do you need to have reproduction SE cruiser bars on your bike if you can't find affordable originals?

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But that is what you guys are saying to many, many people here. YOUR BIKES SUCK! THEY ARE NOT GENUINE! THEY HAVE A SUCKY PART ON IT AND THE WHOLE THING SUCKS NOW! AND YOU SUCK FOR SUPPORTING THE SUCK! ......It just sounds plain old "mean" much of the time.

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Chicago Gets Their Man: It's been a long time coming... but the Chicago Police have finally done what no other agency has done to date. They got Tom Gunther of Schaumburg, Illinois. Tom Gunther has been one of the more notorious sleazebags in our hobby for a long time. His typical game is to have tons of badges made up and sell them to us as "authentic" department issue. He has made tons of money bilking collectors around the world, mostly with the assistance of PC News, who continually allows his advertisements.

But then, Gunther hit the Internet, more specifically, E Bay. Apparently Chicago PD tripped over him there...

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"Minty White" Fake Inserts

By David A. Lieberman



As you can see from the list directly above, there are at least 20 highly collectible titles that have fake inserts. Inserts are printed on card stock and measure 14" x 36". There has been much talk about this topic within the past few years between the top dealers and collectors of movie posters. Every major dealer and name in this hobby has expressed their opinion on this and ALL agree that it is a MAJOR problem. The only ones who believe these inserts are real are the ones who are selling them every week on ebay. They say they are from "a warehouse find". This is total B.S.. They have an endless supply. There are also a select few fake lobby card sets and half sheets. Half Sheets measure 22" x 28" and are also on card stock.



So how do you spot them? Well first of all, as far as anybody has researched, the above titles are the only ones known with confirmed bootlegs. The bootlegs have the NSS info. and GAU markings like the originals. If they are "Minty White" and look brand new like they were printed yesterday........they probably were! If they are glossy on both sides, they are fake. If you see it for sale on ebay for a low "buy it now" price, and this same dealer has been selling them continuously for years.....it is most likely a fake. You can disregard their almost perfect feedback record....it is completely irrelevant. They sell a ton of "real" original posters, but they also sell these fakes continuously. They do not care that they are ruining the hobby. None of the buyers knows they have been burned until it is too late and they have already left positive feedback. These dealers prey on newbies that are unaware that fake posters even exist!!

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In the Lair of the Repro Kingby Bill Johns, owner, Coxsackie Antique Center Reprinted with Permission Coxsackie Antique Center
Visit the Center's website at: http://www.coxsackie.com

"Know thine Enemy." That's good advice for every serious antiques collector or dealer. We recently ventured into the deepest bowels of the Repro Monster, visiting Castle Reproductions in Hawley PA. It should be an obligatory pilgrimage for every collector and dealer. We made our hegira during a trip to Virginia this October.

Hawley is located in northeastern PA in the heart of the Pocono Mountains. The drive is beautiful. And the town of Hawley seemed very attractive, with several NICE antique centers and shops to make the trip worthwhile.

Castle Repros is located in a huge old factory building on the main road into town from the south. As we approached, we saw a parking lot full of cars, cube vans, and covered trailers. There were loading docks off to the side with people loading up trailers full of Castle merchandise, all on it's way to a store or auction near you.

We entered the building. The first floor is the retail floor. The second floor is wholesale. If you have a dealer sales tax resale number, you fill out the usual tax form and are admitted to the second floor. The items on the second floor are marked at 1/2 the price displayed on the first floor. Or dealers can buy goods on the first floor at 1/2 the price marked. (All prices quoted in this article are wholesale dealer prices unless noted otherwise.)

The full name of the place is "Castle Antiques and Reproductions" and there are, indeed, a few legitimate antiques, marked with a blue tag, on the first floor. They must be there as window dressing though because the prices are absurd, even at 50% off. For instance, there was a nice set of Crooksville China, 92 pieces. Crooksville is a mice but not great name in American dinnerware. We'd put it out for $95. Castle's price was $550 ($275 dealer!) You could buy a set of 6 trade cards (of the sort you can buy at any antique shop for $1 each) which were glued to a backer board (thereby ruining any value they might have had) and mounted in a $2.00 Wal-mart frame. Castle's price? $70 ($35 dealer!) And several of the "blue tag" items looked like fakes to us. But people don't go to Castle for the antiques. The antiques are simply show pieces to try to add a veneer of legitimacy to the operation.

It's the fakes that the most of the customers come for and there were thousands of different items to choose from. Here is a litany of just of few of the ones most likely to cause you difficulty.

Large Titanic Poster, $25. We later saw this poster in three different antique centers during the trip, each priced in the in the $150-$200 range.
"Roseville." There were dozen's of different shapes and patterns priced at $10 - $20 each. Or you could take advantage of the "Auctioneer's Special" - 10 Pieces for $150.00. We saw these counterfeit Roseville pieces almost everywhere. A few were marked "repro" but invariably they still carried sizeable price tags - from $40 to $90 each. We also saw pieces marked on the tag as "art pottery." Calling these low quality counterfeits "art pottery" is almost as fraudulent as calling it "Roseville." The most brazen deception we encountered was at the Featherstone Mall in Woodbridge VA where a dealer with a booth full of counterfeits tagged the fakes "Roseville, second generation, start your collection now, $57." Of course, it's not Roseville, it's not second generation anything except counterfeit, and it will never be collectible.
We also encountered one fake piece that was good enough to make us pick it up and look at it to see what it was. People have been lulled into a false sense of complacency by the shoddy quality of the current fakes, but it's only a matter of time before better counterfeits begin appearing. And when they do we won't be seeing them peddled by some outfit like Castle. They'll be introduced into the market much more surreptiously, using the smoke screen of the shoddy Castle fakes to lull buyers into complacency.
Marble top tables, various shapes and styles, many with ormulu decoration, $100 and up. These looked pretty good. They can easily fool you - especially if one comes up at auction.
Folk painted furniture. There were many different types of stands, shelves, and tables, all covered with elaborate folk art painting. Some of the decorations were obviously new, but some rather effectively copied traditional folk art motifs.
Oak china cabinet with curved glass fronts and sides, $125. They look pretty good. They could easily fool a novice auction bidder.
Railroad china. There were small individual sugars, creamers, and plates from a number of important rail roads. There were pieces from the Pennsylvania RR, the New York Central System, the Santa Fe, the Union Pacific, and the Missouri Pacific.
Phrenology Heads, 2 sizes, white ceramic with blue lettering, marked "F. W. Fowler, M.D." The large size was $16.00. We saw these at several shop on the trip, price in the $85-$100 range.
There were many quilts in many different designs priced at $40 - $50. They look quite good but the hand stitching is done very hastily. Instead of 12 or more stitches per inch, these quilts show only 6 or 8 per inch. They are flooding the market, appearing at auctions and at major department stores. They have severely damaged the market for authentic quilts.
There were dozens of different counterfeit posters for sporting events, rock concerts, movies, and political races. Among sports posters was a 1955 Yankees Dodger World Series poster and a 1903 First World Series Poster. There were also posters for some of the major boxing matches of the last several decades. Among the rock posters, Woodstock, the Beatles, the Supremes, Buddy Holly, Elvis, etc. were among the counterfeited. Kennedy, Nixon, Eisenhower, and Truman were among the political posters. These posters cost $2.00 each dealer. (We once told one of our dealers who brought in an Eisenhower Poster that "It must be genuine because no one would bother to counterfeit Eisenhower!" Oh well.)
They have reprinted a series of famous indian photographs, available at $1.00 each. We later saw three of these, cheaply framed, being offered at $25 each without any notation that they were recent prints, not actual photographs.
There were many different fake black memorabilia items including paper fans, prints, Bull Durham items, Gold dust items, etc. In fact, black items have been so massively counterfeited that most of the ones you find in antique centers and auctions are actually fakes. Before you buy black memorabilia, examine it VERY carefully, and insist on a guarantee.
There are many fake Louis Icart prints. We saw these at several centers.
They had counterfeits of the famous 1953 Marilyn Monroe calendar which had been chemically treated to create the illusion of age. The paper is stacked in a smoke house or confined space and smoked or fumed. The chemicals are absorbed into the paper and give it an aged look. But the chemicals only penetrate a short way into the paper. If the discoloration fades as you move in from the edge you've got a faked piece of paper.
There were grocery store mechanical signs with rotating numbers to change the prices. Some of these had also been "aged." (Oops! We sold several of these at the center last year before we learned they were fakes. If you're out there reading this, call us. We'll refund your money!)
Ceramic RCA Nipper dog, about 16" tall, $19 (Maybe there's a trademark infringement suit there if RCA cares to protect its trademark.)
Tin Signs, all sorts $2.50 to $6.00.
"Victorian" hatpins, $2.00 each.
Majolica, many shapes and patterns.
Staffordshire figurines, $20 per pair.
Snow Shoes, $40.
Netsukes, dozens of forms, $3.00 each.
Snuff bottles, $4.50.
Coke trays, dozens of varieties, $5.50.
Coke paper napkins, $3.00 per package.
Blue Willow dishes (adult), 20 pcs, $17.
Blue Willow doll tea set, 12 pcs, $6.50.
Blue Willow doll tea set, 40 pcs, $11.00.
Confederate buttons, 10 for $15.00.
Sheriff's badges, 7 for about $15.00.
and on and on and on, ad nauseam.
The place had a lot of customers, most of them in the 2nd floor dealer area. We only saw one customer on the first floor - a couple with a child in a stroller. On the second floor, there were a large number of people, many wheeling shopping carts around just like at the supermarket. We overheard one group of dealers doing their christmas shopping along with restocking their inventory! Here's a counterfeit majolica pitcher for aunt Minnie; here's some fake doll china for Sarah; and a wow, look at this phoney Gulf oil sign for Uncle George! We trust they'll all be thrilled with their gifts.

We remain mystified as to why this kind of an operation is able to function. The operators will claim that THEY are not cheating anyone. They aren't representing their items as anything other than reproductions. The items have country of origin marks on them when required. They'll say their simply creating nice "decorator items" for people who can't afford the real thing. And if someone else uses them to defraud after they leave Castle, it's not Castle's responsibility. All of which, of course, is total nonsense.

They call the place Castle Antiques and Reproductions. But the fact that they have a small handful of antiques scattered around on the first floor amongst the tens of thousands of fakes, doesn't justify the misleading effect of the name. The country of origin marking are put on with labels so easily removed that the floors are covered with them. They fall off so easily that a purchaser could defend himself against a charge of removing the label by claiming that he didn't remove it, it just fell off. If they really intended them to be sold as decorator items, they would put a date and origin on every item with an indelible mark. If they were proud of their work, they'd mark it with a great big Castle logo to develop some brand recognition. Such a mark would have no adverse impact on "decorator" sales.

As we were leaving, they gave us a nice thick catalog and two recent updates and assured us that they "have new items arriving every week." (The catalog and updates are available for review at Coxsackie Antique Center.)

It should be added that Castle is not the only company purveying these fakes. There are dozens of companies bringing in hundreds of container ship loads every year, and hundreds of "freelancers" targeting specific collector areas.

The Impact of "Repros"
There is an alarming indifference within the antiques community about the "repro" problem. Many people seem to think that they are smart enough to avoid being fooled by fakes and they don't sell fakes themselves, so the problem doesn't concern them. How wrong they are. Repros damage us all in many ways.

The first injury is ethical: In a civilized society, we should not be trying to cheat people. (And of course 99% of dealers bend over backward to avoid doing that. Dealers are far far more often the victims than the purveyors.)

The second injury is financial: Supply and demand determine financial value.

Repros artificially increase supply - often creating many times the number of true items. Every buyer who gets suckered in by a fake item is one less person looking for a real one. And once they discovered they've been cheated, they are soured on that entire field of collecting.

Repros also depress demand. The knowledge that large numbers of counterfeits are circulating frightens away potential collectors. The result is a drop in price for items. That effect has been seen in cast iron toys, in pattern and depression glass, in quilts, and in many other areas of collecting. The result is fewer potential buyers for a much greater pool of goods. Inevitably, prices fall.

The third injury, perhaps the most important of all, is cultural: We like to think of the antiques community - collectors, dealers, preservationists alike - as the caretakers of our heritage, as a connection to our forbearers. Antiques are time travelers - ambassadors from the past. The introduction of huge numbers of fakes into our society is diluting, distorting, demeaning, and degrading our heritage. Most of these fakes are so shoddily produced that today they are pretty obvious but as they move out into society and across the years, as Aunt Minnies Majolica accumulates a coating of kitchen grime and Uncle George's Gulf sign hangs in the garage and rusts, they will acquire the patina, wear, etc. that will give them a much more plausible look. In twenty or fifty years, they will have aged to the point where it will be much harder to tell the fake from the authentic. We will then have a situation where the poor quality of the contemporary counterfeiters is attributed to the original manufacturers of an earlier era. The love for our heritage is based substantially on our respect for the quality and care that our forbearers used in producing their material goods. If the items we are exposed to as "old" are actually shoddy recent fakes, then that reverence for the past will fade away, and along with it, the love for antiques.

So don't just wink at the repro pushers and turn away. Eliminating this blight is important to all of us.

What is to be done?
We do not have to tolerate the repro scourge. Here are some things to do. There are laws on the books making much of this fraudulent behavior illegal. Unfortunately, the federal government chooses not to enforce those laws except on behalf of important companies and economic interests. What has to be done is to create pressure on the pointy headed bureaucrats to enforce the laws that exist and on Congress to add additional legal protection.

The are currently laws requiring that imported items be marked with country of origin and making it illegal to remove country of origin tags! Enforcement of those laws would quickly eliminate most of the market for foreign made counterfeits but would simply drive the pushers toward American manufacturers. Still it would be a start.

There is a law on the books called the Hobby Protection Act of 1973. It requires that counterfeit political items and numismatic items be marked "plainly and permanently." The law was passed because the politicians were upset that people were counterfeiting political items (and one of the Congressmen on the conference committee must have been a stamp collector.) Recent efforts to get the FTC to extend that protection to all antiques failed because the FTC concluded that it did not have the authority to broaden the law beyond the scope of Congresses intent and said that it was up to Congress to expand the law. So write your Congressman! We have postcards at the Center all ready for you to fill in and send. We'll pay the postage. Incidently, Castle Reproductions contained dozens of political items and posters, none "plainly and permanently" marked. So here's a chance to begin enforcing existing law.

The FTC claimed that the Customs service would investigate complaints of counterfeits being sold without country of origin tags. The customs service maintains a telephone hotline to accept reports. 1-800-ITS-FAKE (aka 1-800-487-3253). Call them and complain every time you see a counterfeit Roseville piece or paper items, etc. in an antique mall or flea market! You should also submit a written complaint to: Office of Field Operations, Commercial Enforcement Branch, U.S. Customs Service, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington DC 20229.

What else can you do while you are waiting for our public servants to do their job?

First, when you find repros in a mall or an auction or a flea market, raise hell! Make a fuss, cause a commotion, raise a ruckus. Embarrass the pushers, embarrass the mall management. Complain to the other dealers at the mall. Tell them that you can't buy at that Center because they are allowing fakes to be sold and if some things are fakes, others might be too.

Second, buy from dealers who identify themselves. Even at flea markets, look for dealers who put out their card. If you buy anything of substantial value, ask the dealer to write a description of the item on the sales slip and ask for a guarantee of authenticity. And ask them to put their name and address on the receipt. Reputable dealers will be glad to do so. (It wouldn't hurt to write down their license plate number either.)

Third, refuse to patronize dealers who have more fakes than ignorance could explain. They are either too ignorant to be reliable or too dishonest.

Fourth, refuse to patronize auctions that tolerate fakes. Auctions are a major conduit for flooding the country with this junk. Remember the auctioneer's special on Roseville. A few months ago, counterfeit telescopes and sextants suddenly flooded the country. The scammers mailed pieces to auctions all over the country to be sold simultaneously! There is no way that an auctioneer, getting something like that in the mail, would not know that the pieces were fakes! And yet almost everyone who got them sold them. The pieces were selling at auction for hundreds of dollars, and the victimized dealers where reselling them at Antique Centers for even more hundreds of dollars. Thousands of people were cheated. (We had to refund about $400 to a customer at Coxsackie Antique Center!)

In the end, the only thing that will stop the flood of counterfeits is the indignation of the antiques community focused on our colleagues who peddle this trash and on auctioneers who provide the profit and the distribution network. We have to make the cost of pushing fakes greater than the cost of honesty.

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Thanks for the history lesson "Mr. Apr 2006"

Why is it that every now and then the newest members have the most to say?

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Thanks for the history lesson "Mr. Apr 2006"

Why is it that every now and then the newest members have the most to say?

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But I think the elitist attitudes could kill the hobby from all the slander

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They have been made from the dimensions of an authentic set of Skyway bars. Why S/S? It is very strong and you'll never have to re-chrome them........ever! You can powder coat or paint them also. 27.5" wide, 8.25" rise, no stamping or knurling, tig welded 1/2" crossbar and mirror polished. Postage is $10.00 to anywhere in Australia. Please email me for overseas postage costs. NOTE: I'm just now finishing a short run of Kos Kruiser and Mongoose 20" S/S replica bars also. Put your order in now before you miss out.

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Quicksilver for what it's worth...Astro has been around a long while with a new account. That said...a new member can't have an opinion? Funny because if he was new, I'd agree with him & I still do.

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comfort, style, affordability. so ya got a KOS you want to ride. Powerlite bars are cool, and findable. so are lots of other old school bars. wouldn't that be more fun than bolting on repops?

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But I think the elitist attitudes could kill the hobby from all the slander

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MARK the reproduction parts you make SOMEWHERE on the item

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