Fake guitars

[Variable]

I was flicking through Facebook this morning and its quite normal to get the usual adverts and post from Gak guitar guitar etc, I got one from some random guitar seller. 

This seller was selling Gibson, Taylors and all the other famous brands for 85 quid each under some bs it's a collection being sold off. 

I guessing with brands like Gibson and the like guitars costing thousands it's a big business, but who actually would take a punt of an 85 quid Gibson les paul? 

My recent purchase a epiphone Ej 200 cost me 400 quid and I reckon looking at the workmanship there isn't a huge mark up. How bad must these guitars be at 85 quid? Guitars look beautiful in the photos,  I had a scroll through the website I bet the photos are of the real McCoy, and bare no resemblance to the real guitars. 

 

Edited August 29, 2020 by Variable

[Skinnyman]

The advert I saw claimed these were liquidation stock and showed a load of guitars in open boxes. 

Strangely, all of the boxes were identical size and shape, were unlike any of the Gibson, Fender or Rickenbacker boxes I’ve ever seen and had no hard cases or gig bags.

I think they’re probably not genuine

[EdwardMarlowe]

Confucious say "If offer too good to be true..."

I can only surmise that anyone selling off a collection like that who really didn't need to money would still either ask for a bit more, or maybe sell at market value for charity, or donate to something like Jail Guitar Doors. 

Of course a fake guitar can be a good one: Slash's Appetite for Destruction LP was a fake...  Before Fender got on the ball with their relics, there were people making "replicas" and selling them as such, but still using the Fender TMs. These, however, sounds like a con from start to finish. At that price they simply can't be better than the very bottom end Harley Bentons; the fact that they are using the Gibson name to try and sell them suggests they aren't. Likely they are the cheapest and nastiest of kit guitars thrown together, and not what the photos depict. That is, of course, assuming there is any product to sale and somebody isn't intending just to hoover up cash and disappear. 

My best guess is that its' a con, and you would get a guitar but the cheapest and nastiest sort, likely built to order based on whichever model you asked for. In the leather jacket world, it's very common for sellers based in Indian, China & Pakistan to steal copyrighted photos from other businesses (and even buyer photos from forums - yes, yours truly ended up a "model" on one such website after I put up photos on a forum of me in a US-made leather jacket!) and then put those up on their website. They never actually make the jacket unless or until one is ordered, at which point they send you a cheap approximation thereof. Quality varies.... usually from low to substandard. Put it this way, if somebody is this cavalier with the truth - and other people's IP - do you really expect they care enough to make a good product? 

The other long-running con eBay fought for a long time before they stopped it is charging a tenner for a guitar and £200 for the postage. If it was what it claims to be, £210  ain't bad, but when it shows up and it's clearly a crap fake and you ask for your money back, well , you only paid £10 for the guitar..... (eBay stamped this out from self interest as it was a way of avoiding their fees, but I'm sure it still goes on elsewhere.)