How to Buy Authentic Louis Vuitton handbags & Prada handbags at Low Prices on eBay?

This guide is brought to you by Zimply.Marvelous! As the title suggests, this guide is designed to help you to find authentic Louis Vuitton or Prada handbags at low prices on eBay. Things that you’ll learn in this guide don’t limit to Louis Vuitton and Prada alone as you can use your knowledge to buy Balenciaga, Gucci & etc. This guide is not the typical eBay guides on how to identify a fake Prada or Louis Vuitton handbag from a real one. I focus heavily on how you can buy cheap, authentic handbags in good condition on eBay. 

Let me start off by introducing myself. My name is Paolo and I’m a shopoholic ;-). If you are curious to know why a guy has so much knowledge on handbags and shopping, please click here to visit my “About Me” page. I’ve been buying on eBay for a while now and what prompted me to write this guide is the fact that I feel terrible for the people who pay hundreds of their hard earned money on some fake purse that can be bought in Chinatown for a fraction of what they pay. It’s my wish that you will find this guide helpful at the end.

What’s Cheap?
What’s cheap to me may not be cheap to you, so let me define my definition of cheap. Of course my standard varies from brand to brand and model to model, but as a general rule, I consider something’s fair if I could buy it for 20% of its original retail price. So if a handbag retails for $1000 and I can buy it for $200, that’s fair to me (again, this varies from brand to brand. You would be very, very lucky to buy authentic LV handbags for 20% of its costs). Of course, the condition of the bags has to be excellent. I can tolerate some minor scratches from general use, but I’ve never purchased anything with flaws, ripe, stain, holes & etc. The key here is to find cheap authentic bags that are in great condition.

Myth: If the price is too good to be true, it has to be fake.
This is probably one of the common advices from other review guides. I personally don’t believe in this statement and I have proven many times that the statement is wrong. I purchased an authentic Louis Vuitton Abbesses Messenger for $210 instead of $1120 in Louis Vuitton (if you do some research on LV Abbesses, people would even pay $350+ for a fake one on eBay). I bought an authentic Prada hobo bag for little over $110, which retails in Neiman for $960, and I can go on and on and on. I’ll show you in the next section on how to buy like me. My point here is that if you always believe the statement is true, you’ll never find a good bargain, which is what eBay is all about. There are good deals out there, you just have to find them. A word of caution: If an authentic handbag has a low buy-it-now price, I would approach this with extreme caution and make sure I know what I’m buying.

In order to find a good bargain on authentic handbags, you must know how to tell a fake one from an authentic one. Here are some general tips on how to identify and avoid buying fake Louis Vuitton, Prada and other designer handbags. 

1) Get to know the item: You have to know what you are buying. If you are buying a LV Papillon, you better know the bag inside and out. Use the Internet to help you. If you are buying on eBay, chances are you have access to the Internet. Take advantage of today’s technology. Google the item you want to buy and learn as much as you can on that bag. Visit their official website and check out the bag’s features. Take a trip down to your local Neiman, Saks & official boutiques on a weekend and familiarize yourself with the bag. ** While you are there, make sure you document some unusual features only found on authentic items so you can ask the sellers later on.

2) Make sure you know how to distinguish a real one from a fake one: Google “xxxxxx buying guide” and you’ll find many helpful guides on how to identify real and fake handbags. If you know friends who can authenticate handbags, ask them to give you a hand. If you don’t want to do the work, I offer Louis Vuitton and Prada authentication service for a small fee and if you are interested, please click here to find out more.

3) Ask sellers many, MANY questions: If you’ve done all your research homework, you should know your item’s features very well. So when you see an item you like, ask them all the SPECIFIC feature questions. Remember I mentioned to document some unusual features only found in authentic items before? Here’s a great chance to ask the seller. Don’t forget to get all the answers from the seller too. I found many sellers only answer certain questions and purposely avoid others. If you notice the sellers skipped questions 4 and 8, reply back and ask them again. If the sellers answer your questions without really answering, it’s a pretty good sign that the bag is not authentic. Sellers who know their bags are authentic have nothing to hide and will always answer all your questions. Yes, never bid on an item if the seller doesn’t reply to your questions.

4) Avoid asking generic questions: Please don’t ask generic questions and just take their answers for it. I read many times the buyer asks “Is this authentic?” and the seller says “sure is, 100% authentic”. Hmmm…okay... how so!!! Everyone would say their product is authentic. I’ve never came across a listing where they list out that they are selling a replica Prada bag. If there was, eBay would have deleted the posting anyway. If you don’t know what you are buying, at least ask some prove of authenticity and follow up questions. 100% authenticity guarantee doesn’t do the trick either. What it means is just an exchange of money back and forth. Sellers usually require you to pay for your own shipping if you want to ship it back (some sellers will specifically ask you to use Fedex or UPS to ship back and we all know how much that would cost). The high shipping cost that you have to pay is sometimes enough to buy a fake one in Chinatown anyway, so the 100% authenticity guarantee really doesn’t mean anything. Don’t waste your money on unnecessary shipping.

5) Don’t get fooled by feedbacks, seller’s status and guarantees: I’ll probably get many hate mails from the sellers, but be VERY careful when buying from “trusted powersellers”. You have probably browsed through many listings that says something like “trusted power seller with 5000+ positive feedbacks. 100% authentic so bid with confidence.” Please don’t get me wrong that some do sell authentic items, but many others don’t. More importantly, don’t get fooled by the number of positive feedbacks a seller has. Many buyers on eBay simply don’t know what they are buying; hence even though they have a fake handbag, they think they have an authentic one and leave a positive feedback for the seller. Only when the bag meets her authentic cousin, then they realize they have a fake bag. My point here is that don’t get fooled by the number of positive feedbacks and their selling status. I don’t care if they are platinum, gold, silver, powerseller, power ranger, or whatever. ** The only one I believe is trust worthy when buying Louis Vuitton is mypoupette. But again, those with the the mypoupette status usually set their prices high and it’s highly unlikely that you’ll get a good bargain on those items because everyone else knows the bag is real. *** If a seller sells many bags of the same style, I would be very careful about the seller and the item. I would say 9.5 out of 10 that the item is fake.

6) Never bid with less than 24 hours without researching: You are browsing for a handbag and all the sudden you see one you really like but it only has 3 hours left. You quickly rush to ask shipping and authenticity questions but only got a reply with 30 mins left to go. You are all hyped up, but still have to decide 1) what’s my max bid, 2) am I paying too much, and most importantly 3) is this bag really authentic. I’m sure we have all encountered many similar scenarios, because I have. My point here is that never bid on an item with less than 24 hours without prior research. Leave yourself with at least 24 hours to talk to the seller. From my experience, sellers usually take at least 12 hours to reply your questions and if you are asking follow up questions, chances are that 24 hours may not be enough. Why we have to ask questions you ask. Two reasons: 1) I rarely see a listing with enough information on it to determine whether a bag is worth bidding. 2) If there isn’t enough info on the listing to determine if the bag is authentic, the only other way is through asking them questions.

7) Leave your excitement at the door: For you ladies who are familiar with poker, you will know this advice. Shopping on eBay is like shopping in a mall. My advice to both type of shopping is that if you see something you really like, walk away, browse through the entire mall first, then come back and decide if you truly like the item. Of course, if you have tons of cash to burn, you can shop til you drop. But for the other common folks with a budget, calm yourself down first before you buy anything. You make the most mistakes when you are bidding purely on excitement, pressure, or adrenaline, not on facts and research. Take a chill pill, calm yourself and focus on facts and research.

8) Research the street price and set your budget: If you are looking to buy a specific model, make sure you know the ballpark price on eBay, fake or real. What I usually do is that I research the average winning bid for the model I want to buy and I set my budget according to my research. I usually set my maximum bid as the average closing bid. This way I know I’ll never overpay for an item. ***** Once you set your budget, DO NOT change it. I know it’s always tempting to go over your budget whenever you get the outbid message, especially on an item you’ve been looking for a long time. But resist yourself. Take a deep breath, bite your tongue (or fingers) and walk away once you are out-bided. If you’ve done your research, you know the bag doesn’t worth that much and the higher bidder is overpaying for the item. Believe me, there’s no such thing as one in a lifetime chance to buy a handbag on eBay. You will always have a chance to bid for another similar item in the future, usually at better prices too. 

You’ve done your homework and are ready to find a true bargain on eBay. Let me share with you some tips on how to spot a true authentic designer handbags at low prices. This is not going to be easy because it takes time, hard work and patient to find a real authentic bargain. 

1. Listings with blurry picture and short description: how many times have we seen listings with only one blurry picture and a one line description? When most people see a listing with one blurry photo, they would usually click the back button and continue with their search. Now, I’m not saying all poorly written listing is a hidden gem, but you never know. You’ll be surprised that many sellers actually have more pictures on the item, but they don’t post it because it costs them more to post. For the sellers who don’t have additional pictures, if you ask them nicely, they might take some and send them to you and you might just find a hidden gem.

2. Listing with a new seller with no or few feedbacks: Many people have a policy that they will only buy handbags from sellers with certain % of feedback score. I’m not against such thinking; however, you should never skip a posting because they have little or few feedbacks. Remember, we are all a newbie on eBay once. If you do find a hidden gem from a seller with no or few feedbacks, you should approach with caution and definitely use your facts and research on the bag. Communication is very important.

3. Listing that ends on Wednesday and Friday night: eBay claims that the busiest time with the most traffic is during Saturdays and Sundays around evening time. Now, this is great news for sellers; however, it’s not good news for buyers because you just have that much more competition for your bag. eBay also claims that Wednesdays and Fridays are usually slower with less traffic. This is great news for the buyers, so keep an eye out for bags that end on Wednesdays and Fridays.

4. Listing with spelling error: Another fantastic way to find hidden gems. You’ll be surprised how many sellers actually don’t use spell check for their listings. Examples: “Ferragamo” vs. “Ferragano”, “Marc Jacobs” vs. “Marc Jacob”, “Louis Vuitton” vs. “Louis Vuiton”. These listings with spelling errors usually have fewer hits because most people don’t find them, so be sure to take advantage of the seller’s mistake.

These are some of my tips and I hope that you find it helpful for your next bargain hunt.

If you want the comfort of knowing you are buying an authentic item, try my authentication service.