“Real recognize real and you lookin’ unfamiliar” 👀

Being on Poshmark as long as I have, I’ve encountered all kinds of issues; some on the sellers side, and more recently some on the buyers side. This is a first for me. I was sold a pair of counterfeit Converse!!! But what’s even more alarming is the fact that these fakes were some of the BEST counterfeits I’ve ever seen. In the feature photo, one of those sneakers ain’t legit…can you tell which one? Get ready y’all, here comes the whole story on the entire experience.

(**The shoe on the right is the real Converse All Star**)

I know what you might be thinking…me being a fashion enthusiast it’s like kinda a thing to be able to identify fake merch, so how did something slip past ole Kim?????? Honestly, it wasn’t until I purchased the real Converse that I was even able to for certain know without a doubt the ones purchased from Poshmark were not real.

It went something like this…I was looking for a pair of classic all white Converse. I had just put 2 pairs up for sale and had high hopes that I could find a fairly clean/newish pair for a decent price to replace the ones I was getting rid of. When I went scouting, I marked my likes to see what offers I might get. The general price range seemed to be $35-55. I also wasn’t seeing very many options for my size and a couple pairs at that, so I waited a few days to see if anything else would show up.

Then by chance, someone was listing a brand new pair with the box for $25!! Now at this point you might be lookin blank face at me like “Kim really??? That’s too good to be true” and it was, however in my defense, I’ve gotten deals on Posh on AMAZING stuff that is authentic with a too good to be true price as well, soooooooooo yeah, I wasn’t too shocked that someone might have been trying to get rid of a gift they didn’t need *shrugs.

I skimmed over the pictures and everything looked decent. The Converse box looked exactly like the one I had for my own authentic retail purchased red ones I had up for sale, logo was spot on, I’m telling you, nothing screamed out “fake” to me. But then they arrived and things just didn’t seem to add up.

Among the first noted issues, I couldn’t catch that rubber scent that is known with real Converse of this kind; in addition the weight seemed much too light. Real rubber is thick and heavy. I compared them with my own Converse and still couldn’t get a convincing read.

I started looking online and found some help. One of the Classic signs of an authentic pair is a star in the corner of the bottom of the shoe (which one pair had but the other seemed defective and only had what looked like a dot). I checked the stitching which was very clean except the most unnoticeable of spots on the lace holder on the tongue of the shoe. There were loose threads already and some of the stitch punch holes were just outside the sewn down fabric…just enough to look sloppy in comparison to the real ones.

Here is an example of how the font looked inconsistent between the counterfeit shoes as compared to the real ones. Check out how closely the inner stamp logo looks. The fake one has slightly more bold letters stating “Converse All Star”. The color is also off very slightly:

This was another slight variation, but where the rubber line is crooked on the fake one in comparison to the real one:

Patent stamp was wearing out already on the fake ones:

As mentioned before, real converse have a star on the top upper corner stamped very sharply into the shoe whereas the fake ones only had only a dot:

This was all very subtle and if I hadn’t investigated further, I would have probably kept them honestly thinking they were real. As a sneaker head at heart, I just know when something doesn’t feel/fit/look right.

Besides all this the overwhelming evidence in lack of rubber smell and odd lightness in weight of the fake ones, I had enough to back my theory. Needless to say, Poshmark sided with me and I was able to get a full refund.

After thinking more on the subject, I wondered if even the person selling them was in fact aware of the counterfeit product sitting in their closet? I was almost duped so I think it’s likely the person just did not know they were selling a fake.

I wrote this mostly to educate, but also to raise awareness to counterfeit goods. If you’re the type that wants to be absolutely sure your purchase on Posh is authentic, be sure and ask the seller, ask for more photos, investigate before hitting the “accept” button, and make sure to let Posh know if anything seems off.

Til next time,

Happy Poshing