Phony vintage signs

[maidenleap]

Been around , collecting , buying and selling antiques for at least 40 years! Have been on Ebay  since somewhere before 2000! And yet in all those years, all those auctions, all those  garage sales  all those Craigslist adds I have never seen even one of the dozens if not hundreds of vintage porcelain signs that I see on Ebay. Soda pop, motor oil shotgun shells and more.  People spending good money on reproduced or even produced ( it never existed) fake Chinese made signs advertised as vintage or used.  Stop buying this junk as you are wasting your money!  These shysters use tricky language to make you believe their items are antique or at least old! What are the odds that someone was just lucky enough to run across dozens of these vintage signs when most of us have never  seen even ONE!

[magicjohnsonsvariety]

As an old timer, I totally agree with you. Unfortunately, these reproduction signs must be selling, otherwise they wouldn't bother making them.

[ed8108]

I don't know anything about vintage porcelain signs.

I would suspect they sell to buyers who are placing trust in the expertise of sellers

[simba6]

Those have been selling for some time.   Got to love the "rusted" look of them. Many are for things that were not made during that era of signs.   Don't forget the fake ad clocks too.

[silverstatetreasureboxes]

@maidenleap 

     I used to feel very strongly about this same subject, authentic vrs repop signs. I own several authentic, dated, mid-century soda signs and thermometers and they are very hard to come by and now extremely pricey.

     However, I do purchase reproduction porcelain signs for displaying outdoors and if the price is right, flip them in my store.

     It's now " buyer beware and research" with a lot of these sellers. I know what to look for but some novice buyers depend solely on what the seller is saying " RARE! only 10 made, found in Grandfathers barn under his model A!  Buyer gets it home and sees that it has a UPC code sticker on back.

      I just hope buyers will put out the effort to research these signs before they lay down a couple hundred bucks for them and get disappointed that they are not real.

[ed8108]

It's always buyer beware

internet buyers learn - Fakes good enough to pass as an original, sometimes become an original.

[readabouthorses]

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@simba6 wrote:

Those have been selling for some time.   Got to love the "rusted" look of them. Many are for things that were not made during that era of signs.   Don't forget the fake ad clocks too.

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That rusted look makes me think of this. Years ago I worked for Ohio Art Company and we got permission to remake the old Coke trays. We had salesmen on the road and this one salesman from Georgia had a lot of orders for these trays. He finally decided to investigate and found this little "antique" store that was buying the trays, burying them in the back yard so they would get rusty and old looking and then selling them as original Coke trays. He was near the interstate and got a lot of travelers going from up north to Florida who thought they had stumbled onto a gold mine.

So just because it looks old doesn't mean it is.

[maxine*j]

It's not just the signs.  The majority of collectibles, antiques, and antiquities listed on eBay are misrepresented or misidentified, sometimes innocently and sometimes intentionally. 

Reproduction / fake / phony / replica stuff -- from "Hubley" cast iron to "Meissen" porcelain to "Pre-Columbian" potttery -- arrives by the container load from Asia every day and has done since the mid-1980s.   The brick-and-mortar stores are full of it, too.

Truly,  caveat emptor. 

[pierre-le-rosko]

Silver-I saw this 'I know what to look for but some novice buyers depend solely on what the seller is saying'. What are you're top warning signs re a scam seller ?

[pierre-le-rosko]

I assume 99% of the vintage signs on Ebay are repros.I think that a clear-eyed sane approach.

[kh-taylarie]

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