I had my first taste of fake marc jacobs shoes the other night. Luckily, I did not hit bid and I saved myself a lot of trouble. I've been wanting the marc jacobs mouse shoes for a while, and being myself- I wanted a deal. So I thought I'd wait around, and lo and behold- I found a pair on ebay priced at $50. At first, I thought it was TOO GOOD to be true. These shoes have been flying off the shelves in various department stores, so I thought they'd go for more than retail on ebay.

The first thing that rang an alarm were three missing letters from the stamped name on the footbed. "ARC" was missing from "MARC JACOBS" on both pairs. I thought that perhaps a retail sticker ripped the three letters off, but it still did not feel right.

(fake on left, real on right) note how "JACOBS" is in a light grey for the real one.

There were other auctions selling the same shoe for more than retail, so I compared the pair in question with the other pairs. I noticed that although "MARC JACOBS" was stamped in the correct font (and trust me, I'm a typophile), it wasn't lined up exactly in the center of two stitched lines that neighbor it. It was slightly off.

(fake on left, real on right) note how the real one is neatly centered in the stitching.

Now, feeling really suspicious- I noticed that the heel color wasn't even the same and knew I had to do a goofbay (do a google search for "goofbay") check on the seller. It was tricky, because the auction in question was a private one, and everything else the seller has sold in the past were also private auctions. To make things worse, they've had only positive feedback. So I went to the "tools" section of goofbay, and used their "view sellers sold items & turnover" feature. This allows you to actually click on auctions that have completed in the past that were private.

Oh and surprise surprise! The seller has sold several marc jacobs shoes with missing "ARC" from "MARC JACOBS", some fake chanel bags, and possibly fake chanel flats. That was when I realized I had to stay away from this auction. What sucked was, the shoes ended up getting sold for $115. I couldn't contact the highest bidder due to the nature of private auctions, and I couldn't report the listing in time for ebay to remove it (it was a one day auction). It was so sneaky, I just couldn't believe it! So please bid carefully and do your research. There are deals to be had on ebay, but there are also extremely sneaky people.