Did you know that there're lots of Hello Kitty imitation goods on ebay?  Imitation is a gentle word to use.  To me, imitation = not genuine = fake.

Being a Hello Kitty fan for almost 30 years I must say that it irritates me to see so many fake Hello Kitty items here.  I know there're people who actually don't mind buying fakes so long as the price is right.  I only feel sorry for those who "think" they're buying genuine Sanrio products when in reality they are not.  I KNOW there're people who don't know that counterfeit items exist.  I was one of them, about 18 years ago.  Not Sanrio products though.  Let me share with you my experience briefly:-

I joined a famous local tour operator on a trip to Bangkok in 1988.  On the itinerary was a trip to a local handbag manufacturing company.  Christian Dior was the big hit back then and this was the brand I saw being manufactured there.  Their price was about one-tenth of the price at Christian Dior retail shops.  I thought to myself, "Wow, these handbags are so cheap here at the manufacturing plant I must buy a few here."  I bought 3 handbags from them.  When I got back to Hong Kong I examined the inside of the handbags carefully and compared them to the ones I bought previously in retail shops locally.  I found that the quality was really very poor and talked about this with my mom and friends.  They told me that they were fakes.  Thinking back, now I understand why I was THE ONLY ONE out of 30+ people from the same tour who bought anything from the factory.  Everybody else knew they were fakes but me!  I really didn't know there were fakes in this world!  Plus that was on the itinerary!  Bringing us to a factory manufacturing fakes was the last thing on my mind.  I didn't suspect it at all.  That was my first encounter with counterfeit items.

I was very young & too innocent back then and had fallen victim to those "bad guys".  I am sure even today there are people out there who are like the 18-year-ago me, people who don't know anything about counterfeit items.  Over the years, manufacturers of all different kinds of counterfeit items have improved their products too.  Sometimes it's quite difficult to tell the difference between genuine & fake items.  Even having been a Sanrio collector for almost 30 years I still can't be 100% sure on things sometimes.  There're new products from Sanrio almost every week (so do the illicit manufacturers of counterfeit items).  If you include licensees from all over the world I think I wouldn't be exaggerating if I say there're new Sanrio products coming out everyday.

What I see here on ebay is that there're 3 types of Sanrio sellers: those who sell only authentic products, those who sell only counterfeit products and those who sell a combination of both.  The worst are those selling fakes but charging buyers for the price of genuine products.  The uneducated buyers sometimes rely on the price to tell whether they're buying genuine items or not.  With these worst types of sellers around the novice buyers can't tell from the price anymore.  Remember being a "power seller" doesn't exclude him/her from the list of sellers selling fakes.  The problem is that sometimes even if sellers are selling fakes they'll "claim" they're selling genuine products.  To me, 99% of the time I just "know" by looking at a few of the products the sellers are selling because I've been shopping around for Sanrio products for so many years already.  The problem here is that even sellers with 100% positive feedback might not be selling genuine items.  I don't know whether it's because people don't mind buying fakes or people don't know they are fakes.  For those of you out there who don't want to buy fakes I think you just have to do your homework, look around more and buy from trusted sellers. 

Having said that, it's kinda sad to see that quite a lot of authentic Sanrio product sellers have less than perfect feedbacks for a vast number of reasons.  While those who sell fakes sometimes have 100% positive feedbacks plus the power seller logo next to them.  What a world are we living in now?

Because I'm a seller myself, I don't think I'm in a position to say who & who are selling authentic products, who & who are not.  There's something like "conflict of interest"?  (Please excuse my English, it's not my mother tongue.)  Besides, it's quite impossible even for me to be 100% sure because of the large number of products being released so frequently.  The main aim of me writing this guide is to bring out the point that there're fake Hello Kitty items here and to warn those innocent people out there about this.  hm....... maybe buyers should watch out for Hello Kitty figure sets, phone straps, stickers and watches.  These are the things that I see with lots of fakes.  Especially those zodiac, horoscope figure sets, flashing phone straps, wholesale lot of stickers and phone straps.  I dare say more than half the figure sets for sale here are fakes.  With the stickers, the packing usually speaks for itself.  I think true Kitty fans can tell from the look that they are fakes.  I'm just worried about those novice buyers.  Of course if you don't mind buying fakes at all it's a waste of time for you to read this.  I stress again, that this guide is for those of you who didn't know that counterfeit items exist and those who don't want to buy counterfeit items.  I want you to be aware of the fact that there are counterfeit/fake/imitation (or whatever else you want to call it) Sanrio items here.

The information provided here are provided to the best of my knowledge.  I hope I'm not offending anyone out there by writing this guide.

I'm now working on a guide on helping buyers to distinguish between a genuine Sanrio Hello Kitty item and a fake.  I hope I'll be able to put it up here soon.