Fakes.
Copies.
Reproductions.
These three words strike fear in the hearts of collectors everywhere. Trust me I know!
Over the years I, along with thousands of other trusting souls, have managed to find a few choice fakes of some really cool items, mostly Beatles items.
Today I’m sharing two fake finds I own that are really interesting:
- Reproductions of early Beatles 45’s with picture sleeves
- A set of four “Mexican” Beatles REMCO dolls
Most of my fake finds were acquired in the late 1970s and early ’80s through mail order or magazine ads. At a time I was young and naive and was desperate to find some original treasures that were cheap and looked amazingly genuine.
I had a thing for Beatles 45 picture sleeves and when I was twelve I saw a mail order ad featuring a slew of singles with their picture sleeves cheap and mint. I was hooked! Couldn’t put my order in fast enough.
For any future collectors out there, finding rare items for what seems like too good a deal usually is a red flag.
These reproductions were so nice looking that for a few years I thought they were the genuine items. It wasn’t until I bought a real sleeve of one of the singles at flea market that I realized I had been swindled.
Don’t get me wrong, every now and then I still manage to score a few dudes on ebay or from the Amazon marketplace but for the most part I am much more aware of what a real item looks like and I’m not willing to spend much money unless I’m certain an item is real.
Thankfully I’ve never been taken for large sums of money for fake items and in my younger days I thought cheaper price meant better bargain. Nowadays my first thought is cheap equals phony or abused.
Look at my photos of these fakes or reproductions (below).
Take a close look at the Beatles Swan and Capitol 45’s. From a distance the sleeves look great and so do the labels. Impressive actually.
But when you take a closer look you can see the fuzzy blur on the photos (see “We Can Work it Out” sleeve) and the font on the Capitol singles labels is slightly different from originals as well as the colors of the yellow and orange swirl.
Also if you look closely at the matrix markings in the run out grooves they are not machine stamped like originals but sloppily hand etched.
The best reproduction that I knew was most likely a fake even when I was buying it is a groovy set of Beatles REMCO dolls (see photos above and below) that I bought on ebay about 11 years ago. They were listed as “Mexican” made Beatles REMCO dolls that were supposedly quite rare and original.
Now I’ve never found any trace of REMCO Beatles dolls being produced in Mexico but this set was only $75 and since they look so funny with the super long hair I thought they would look great on display.
They do resemble the genuine REMCO dolls but lack instruments around their necks and have colored eyes and painted eyebrows (unlike originals) and the hair on these REMCO repros is about three times as long as the real dolls!
That hair!
It’s so out of control and over the top that it really makes these reproductions worth owning as long as you don’t pay too much. Side by side with original REMCO dolls I actually enjoy the freakish look of the fakes to the originals!
There are so many resources in print and online these days that it’s now much easier to spot fakes but there are some really good ones out there.
Feast your eyes on these fun reproductions and as always BUYER BEWARE!
Enjoy and until next time Happy Collecting!!!
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