Since August 2012 Ebay seller 515george from Athens, Greece has been trying to sell these Greek, Albanian and Bulgarian plates. He is still active at the beginning of 2014 with some new fakes.
They have all been made in plate shops in Greece and are either outright fakes or made-to-order specials. The comments below have all been checked and found to be accurate by a plate collector who lived in Greece.
Some of his plates are very poorly painted and those that should be reflective are not as they are painted and do not use reflective material on the base plate.
The Bulgarian and Albanian plates have the wrong dies and are fakes.
The Greek Diplomatic plates are all made to order specials but he is trying to sell them as genuine used ones when the only vehicle they have ever been on is his own car to take a picture. He sometimes tries to sell them without holes and then drills some holes and photographs them on a car and tries to sell them again as genuine used. Some of the serial numbers are way too high for the small embassies that they are supposed to be from.
The new blue diplomatic plate is a very poor copy as they are all officially issued now and have the official seal above the CD. On his plate the font is wrong as well. A very poor quality fake.
The two Greek two line IOI plates are fakes and are illegal in Greece.
The Greek yellow embassy staff plates are made to order specials but three have numbers that will never be used and the other has a number that expired in the 1970s. They are all cheap, but wrong, made-to-order specials.
The Greek single line private plates are fakes. One has no official seal on it, the second one that has supposedly had the official seal removed (there is a hole there now), never had the official seal in the first place and the others have a printed paper seal applied where the real embossed one should be. They have the wrong dies and are very poor, cheap copies. There is one that looks genuinely used but unfortunately, it is an illegal owner provided copy that has the wrong font and a very dubious seal.
The supposedly Greek motorcycle plates that he tries to sell as used are actually normal shop provided, unused, moped plates that maybe do not even have possible numbers on them. They have the wrong dies also. One has a fake, paper, sticker added. The one genuine looking KPH 1983 series mc plate is also a fake with a poorly applied license sticker. This type of plate never had the blue band and should have the official embossed seal.
The red on white PNI plate is supposed to be a 1991 series truck plate but they looked nothing like this and had all gone from vehicles before the plates with Eurobands were introduced. This is a very poor quality fake.
The fire service, government owned, navy and coast guard plates are close enough but have never been near a fire service, government owned, navy or coast guard vehicle and have come straight from some plate shop in Athens. Made-to-order specials.
The supposedly Olympic Airways plates are not even close to real Olympic Airways plates, have numbers that were never used and the real Olympic Airways plates were never official and used almost exclusively on vehicles that never went on public roads, staying only inside the airport. More fakes.
The supposedly disabled veteran plates are all wrong as full size plates have a section with the official seal on it. More fakes.
The supposedly taxi plates are very poor copies of real plates as the official seal and the technical inspection stickers are paper copies stuck on to these badly made plates. Real taxi plates have the seal embossed into them. The other and perhaps bigger problem is that the registration numbers on these plates have never existed and never will. More fakes.
The army plates are from vehicles that would have been in service a very long time ago if they were real plates and would probably have been for some sort of pick-up or 5 ton truck from the numbers. Made-to-order specials.
2014 extras: The dealer plate is nothing like a genuine dealer plate and the international truck plate is a made-to-order special as it is at best an owner provided unofficial one. It is mint (unused) however.
He obviously knows very little about genuine Greek plates even though he is from Greece.
Although he lists most of his plates as ‘100% authentic’ and ‘used’, if you read his descriptions carefully, he states they are ‘brand new’. He does sell a few genuine used, official, Greek plates also but beware, as he likes to add technical inspection stickers from other plates that would never have been on the plates in the first place.
All made especially to part unsuspecting collectors from their money with poor quality plates that are not even correct. I believe that each of these plates has cost him about 10 EUR to have made.
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