I was minding my own business when I almost gagged as I scanned the Royal Memorabilia Section of E-Bay. There it was! EVIL thoughts and stomach churning emotions gripped me and held me fast! For a heart-beating, endless moment out of time, my brain and I turned to hot, acid-green LAVA...I could feel it: The Memories flooded me with gripping pain: Clenching pain...Like when...well, you know! Cramping, gripping, here it comes and its coming the Wrong Way!!! kind of pain...

    . There IT was! AGAIN!!! The EXACT copy of The Fake, The Forged, and advertised as  "hand-signed" Christmas card supposedly sent to an unnamed someone  (you?, perhaps, you think, imagining yourself showing-off your prize to an open-mouthed, amazed group of people who had thought, up until that fantasy in the future perfect moment, that you were just an ORDINARY PERSON, like Them!!) and signed by Princess Diana HERSELF, as I MYSELF had imagined (Blushing. Beet-color. Stop it. I can't!) I had bought THAT EXACT SAME CARD for over 350USD last Spring!!! It was happening all over again!!! I HAD TO ACT! IMMEDIATELY!!!

     Horror struck me as I looked at the Seller's auction copy! He (I imagined a "he" I don't know why) was an innocent party, he had to be...Immediately I wrote to this person and told him or her or THEM exactly what TRASH they had for Sale, and that, if the card sold, International copyright laws would be violated! I also told them that now, knowingly selling a forged item would mark that seller as DISHONEST and TOTALLY UNFAIR, and that selling that card would be a CRIMINAL ACT!!! (As well as being totally against E-Bay Policy!!!)

    He sent me a few terse replies, like "Thanks!" and "I appreciate your 'help,'" and I thought the seller had done the only HONORABLE THING and sadly withdrawn the item from sale, using the Site Map for that option.

    Little did I imagine the dripping sarcasm in which those terse replies had been drenched...

    SO:  NOOOOOO!!  The card WAS SOLD!!! And for 481USD!!! The seller had totally disregarded my warning against doing an immoral and terrible, and FELONIOUS Thing!!! Sending a forged card through the mail would constitute MAIL FRAUD!!! A Felony, in The US, punishable by some serious JAIL TIME!!!! And Big Time FINES!!!!

    Apparently, he thought me to be some sort of WEIDR PERSON, butting-in where I had no business butting...But! I DID have such business! The foundations of E-Bay Itself were being attacked! BUT I told him just exactly how and why his card, an exact copy of the card I had bought, was a GENUINE FAKE...

    I don't know about you, but I hate being ignored, especially when I am right...(When I am wrong, that's another thing altogether; then ignore away, I say!)

    You may be thinking, "What's it to HER what this guy does?"
   
    What's it to MEEEE??????  What's IT TO ME???

    I'LL TELL YOU what's it to ME!!

    I KNOW HOW IT FEELS to be DUPED and taken advantage of!! I am called a kind person by many, and I am totally honest, except for the lies I told my then-two-year-old about Santa and The Tooth Fairy...and I was coerced by an uncaring Society to tell those things to my child, lest all of the other parents in her pre-school came upon my house, torches lit, in the middle of the night, yelling angry invectives against me!!! I ADMIT IT!!!! Nobody's perfect...

    But, on E-Bay! It's The Truth and Nothing BUT the truth...So, I butt-in because I wished to save this Seller from Him/Her or Themselves and the greed which must have been driving that sale..(Why do you think I had bought the card last Spring? Greed. Desire to have something Real from Princess Diana...Hey, I should have thought, If It's Too Good To Be True...It ISN'T! But, Noooo....I wuz wrong, and I admit it! But I didn't want to see all that slimy deja-vu all over again...Not if I, Superwoman, could jump in and Save the E-Bay Day, Night, Whatever...)

    AND, in THIS case, I KNEW I WAS ABSOLUTELY and POSITIVELY RIGHT!!! It was my duty, I thought, to help this seller avoid committing fraud! Ignorance is NO EXCUSE in The Eyes of The Law!!! (And, once the scales of Ignorance fall from the perpetrator's Eyes, then the "perp" (hey, watch some crime shows here) is as Guilty as the Sin he or she or they are committing!!!)

    But did the seller LISTEN?????   NOOOOOO.

    Will E-bay listen??? I don't know...I hope Someone with Authority does...These cards have popped-up on E-Bay...enticing those willing to temporarily suspend their disbelief just long enough to drop large chunks of change into others' coffers...AND at Princess Diana's expense!!

    So! You are asking, and rightly so, as my build-up here, reflecting my disgust, outrage and despair that such things could be going-on right here in E-bayland, where all Sellers are presumed honest, has gone on a tad over-long...well, Something stuck in my my craw erupted after this sale went down...

    A TRUE GUIDE WAS NEEDED! AND I, greedy little ex-victim that I was, am now, like The Masked Avenger (or something along those lines), am writing This Guide to help those who can read this far AVOID making the dreadful mistake I myself made...

    I HAD to defend Truth, Justice, The Princess's Honor, and The Superman Way which used to be The American Way, until we turned a few corners a few too many times over here...but I digress...(Really? You hadn't noticed?)

    It is TRUTH TIME, my friends! And Here it comes: Liquid Truth, tapped right from The Source from that Tree in Eden (or nearabouts):

    So, how does one spot a fake British Royal Christmas card???

    I will tell you, as my associate, whose name I cannot divulge, but who has tons (or at least pounds) of the real Christmas cards sent out by the British Royal Family for the last thirty years or so, told me (having graciously deferred from tut-tutting me to death...) :

    FIRST of all: A REAL British Royal Family Christmas Card has it's chosen picture for any given year  neatly GLUED onto the card stock. (And the card stock itself is a rich, expensive paper; not folded cardboard or Bristol Board, available at ANY art store anywhere in the World, as the card I saw and had bought myself and tried to return myself was composed of!) Said picture is NEVER, EVER a part of that card's paper...It is NEVER xeroxed right onto the card itself...which fact ALONE marks it as FAKE, FAKE and FAKE, in that order.

    SECOND : A REAL card, has a RAISED golden Royal Seal (or Seals, depending upon The Royal Sender) from The British Royal Family Members, such as Princess Diana, Prince Charles, The Queen, etc , embossed onto it's front from the back, so it is raised. You can close your eyes and FEEL the details of the Seal...So...If the seal is flat, then so should the song in your heart become...

    THIRD:  A wonderful E-Bayer just told me this, so I am adding it because it makes sense, and I am taking it on her authority...She has been involved with many a Royal Card herself. In any event, she said that a REAL Royal Christmas card will ALWAYS have a salutation in the upper lefthand corner of the card. The Royal person is sending it to a friend with a NAME, such as "Dear Auntie Mame," or some such...It is a PERSONAL greeting to a real, known person, rather than a "duty" card, sent to people on the royal, but lesser list. Now, as I am taking this on another's expertise, you should know that this third way to see if a card is "real" has been given to me to put into this guide. But, as it makes such good sense, look for another KNOWN Royal or friend with "connections" who is being greeted...The only problem with this is that some evil souls will scribble something in and claim it's "real." BUT the Royals have such distinctive handwriting, you will be able to spot a fake salutation...The upper writing must match the lower! Prince Charles and Princess Diana have VERY distinctive handwriting, as does HRH Queen Elizabeth and The Queen Mother...so do a little RESEARCH on their handwriting and the person to whom the card is being addressed before saying "Oh, there's a greeting; it must be real." MATCH samples of real handwriting, which can be found on the net, before taking a salutation at face value....

   FOURTH of all: A REAL Royal Family Christmas Card is signed with real INK...NOT with a raised xerox of the sender's name, as was done on this offending card which nauseated and infuriated me so.... A card can either be REALLY hand-signed, with a pen, or signed by what those in the know call "auto-pen." In any event, there will be an inked signature involved, not a xerox copy, however cleverly imprinted onto the cardboard.

             AN Auto-pen signature is not xeroxed, but is made by the following process:

                [By the way, auto-pen letters often come to US citizens from Congressmen, and other celebs, so don't get too excited about that "Edward M. Kennedy" or "Jimmy Carter" card you may be holding onto..Unless you actually KNOW these people personally, if there's real ink on what they've sent you (like a sincere and personal request for funds, for example) you've gotten a letter signed by auto-pen.] This part does remind me about the Tooth Fairy all over again...when I Told All to my very smart and then VERY ANGRY three-year-old...long, long ago...

                An auto-pen is a machine!!! ( Not like "The Terminator," but A Machine nevertheless...)  The real and actual living celebrity takes a real pen in his or her real hand and, with it attached to a machine, actually writes-out his or her real signature.  That's it. Then the real, alive person goes away, and the pen, attached to the signing machine, continually repeats "signing" anything from cards to letters to endorsements "from the heart," or anything else the person directs his or her minions to use the machine on...

    An auto-penned signature, especially one from a British Royal, and especially especially one by Princess Diana or The Queen Mother or The Queen, is still worth gobs of money...but nothing close to the REAL, Hand-Signed ones of which I speak...of...

    Have you noticed HOW MANY TIMES I HAVE ENDED MY SENTENCES WITH PREPOSITIONS???? ARRRRAAAAAUUUUUGGGGHHHHH!!!

    Sorry about that...But it just goes to show my agitated state of mind while stating JUST THE FACTS, MA'AM!!!!

     And, What do We All Know About Ink??? Well, when ever-so-slightly moistened, it runs....like those water-colors run and turn my true-to-life watercolors into works of "abstract art."

    If the ink on your "signed" card don't run...run to The Police if you've bought something that has been represented as "genuine hand-signed" work. (And, of course, if the ink runs, but the signature looks a bit "off," then someone is trying to foooool you by trying to imitate the real signature...I've seen THOSE cards and pictures out there too...For SHAME!!! )

    An expert can tell an auto-penned signature (which, by the way, ALWAYS looks exactly THE SAME) from a hand-done signature, which NEVER looks EXACTLY the same.

    And a XEROXED SIGNATURE???? HMMMMM>>>Well, aside from being an illegal copy of someone's property, it always looks the same, and it's ink doesn't run...unless the forger is really good with a xerox machine...But, once xeroxed, the ink won't run...

    So! There! I have disgorged my REAL AND TRUE KNOWLEDGE, gained from consulting an expert at considerable cost, emotional upset and genuine, hand-wrought heartache, upon this Guide page...

    I think people buying stuff have a right to have a little knowledge about autographs so they know what they're buying...especially if you're a buyer, like myself, who has decided to take a chunk of life savings and "invest it wisely" in an autographed artifact.

    Oh, and One more Thing: LOOK at any hand-signed Thing and check it against real copies of famous signatures which have been re-printed by the knowledge and consent of the person or the person's Estate...BEFORE you Bid.

    I admit it. I was taken-in..I learned The Hard Way...And THAT is why I have written This particular Guide:

    I do not wish Another, anywhere, to suffer the slings and arrows inflicted upon me by my own greed, ignorance and outright stupidity as I positively leaped to my computer to buy that fake card!!! (I may be dumb, but I am no longer STUPID!!!)

    I hope that you, oh, Gentle Reader, have learned from My Mistakes...

    At least then, SOME GOOD will have come from this read...

    Blessings, my friends...And, remember: if you feel someone trying to wrangle YOUR false teeth out from under your pillow, they are probably NOT going to be leaving any MONEY under it after they leave!!!

    Blessings, Cheers and A Good Day/Night to You, Everyone!