In April 2018 Ebay seller jbeerd (aka carplatespro) from Moscow in Russia was trying to sell these replica Christmas Island and Liechtenstein plates. He usually has up to10 copies of each plate with the same numbers.
Both of these replicas are very, very wrong.
The Christmas Island plate is completely the wrong size blank, it should be steel not aluminium, the colour is wrong, there are no pre-made holes and the embossed letters and numerals are wrong.
The Liechtenstein plate is completely the wrong size blank, the wrong style of blank and has the wrong font.
Do you really want in your collection a fake plate that is not only obviously very wrong but that many other people also have? Why not just make a drawing of the plate on a piece of cardboard or have a picture printed on card from the www of a real plate and put that in your collection. Much cheaper and better than a fake plate.
The big problem is going to come later when some of these plates get into the market. From a photo during a sale or trade it could be difficult to tell if the plate or plates are genuine or not to someone without the correct knowledge. It just proves that any plate you bid on or trade for MUST be checked against the huge number of photos of genuine plates available on the www.
This just makes everything difficult for everyone. Reproductions are very bad for the hobby and if you care about the future of the hobby, it is better you do not buy reproductions, especially such poor quality ones like this seller makes. I guess selfish people just do not care about anything other than having a nice shiny new (as well as expensive, fake & wrong) plate in their collections. Sad really. You can’t even boast to your collector friends about your collection when it has really bad fakes in it like this.
[previous] [next]