Nothing is worse than bidding, winning, and waiting for a game you think you got a great deal on.  Then you receive it and leave the seller positive feedback.  Then a day, a week, maybe even a month(if your lucky) the problems begin.  You will notice that your progress is not saving correctly anymore, when you power on you will see Japanesse letters, or it might say corrupt data. Sorry to say, but you really can't be 100% sure if your buying a bootleg untill you already have so if any of these things happen, you have a bootleg game.

How to Avoid Bootlegs:

1. If the game is from another country like Japan, China, or Asia  don't buy it.  Pleanty of bootlegs come from the states but you will have a better chance of buying a authentic game.

2. If there are no pictures of the actual game your bidding on ask for them.  If a seller is selling quality authentic games he will supply you with pictures.  Sometimes if the seller provides pictures look at the label, bootlegs the labels are often not straight they are sloppily thrown on.

3. You can't get a brand new game for 1/4 the retail price.  If its cheap be careful, ask questions.  Also watch out for sellers that have multiple listings of the same game.

4. Match the labels, compare the game in question label, to one in a major store.  If there is no Label don't buy it.  If a game is listed as new and it doesnt come with a box or manuals, its problably fake.  New products comes in new packaging.  Sometimes your brand new bootleg will come with a box that the seller told you will be flatten for shipping reasons which is true, only when you get it it is clear the box has never even been folded into shape, this is because it came right on the printing press the delivered to you.  This is one they always use: Game is brand new and fully tested, well why would have have to test a brand new game, of course it should work.

5. Look inside the cartridge slot, just beyond the gold connectors you should see Nintendo if you do not see this, you have a bootleg.  Every authentic Nintendo game has Nintendo printed there.  This will tell you 100% authentic or not.

6. Many Bootlegs have little dents on the gold connectors

7. Bootlegs also will corrupt save data, bootlegs are cheaply made and use cheap crap batteries to save your progress.  They last a day to a month.

8. Bootlegs can even case damage to your game boy, because they are made cheap a lot of times the bootleg cartridge is thicker than a authentic one so it can damage the prongs inside your game boy.

9. Check Feedback, see what the seller has been selling and how happy the buyers have been.

10.  Pokemon games are one of the hottest selling games on Ebay, because of this there are a lot of pokemon bootlegs out there.  Pokemon games always come in colored carts according to title.  The only Pokemon game that comes in a normal grey cart is Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire Pinball.  All other Pokemon games are as follows.

Pokemon Ruby- Clear Red               Pokemon Sapphire- Clear Blue                                      

Pokemon Emerald- Clear Green       Pokemon Fire Red- Clearish Red

Pokemon Leaf Green- Clearish Green

What do you do after you realized you have bought a bootleg game:

There is not too much you can do.  Sure leave the seller bad feedback to warn other buyers.  You can file with Ebay for Item not as Discribed.  Remember selling bootlegs is illegal so most sellers will not admit this to you, if they even reply to your emails. So the chances of them refunding you is slim to none.  Maybe you could report them to Nintendo and Ebay, but you arent gonna change the world, sorry.  My best advice would be trade the game in at a local game shop and get some store credit, most the the employees at places like that are kids that wouldnt know the diffrence.

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