Has anyone else noticed a huge uptick in the fakes there the last month or so?
I’m used to seeing a handful of any given brand, but it has gotten ridiculous the last little bit, and not just cheap clones from china being sold cheap. We’re talking US addresses selling them for just a tiny bit under full price.
And eBay does not care at all. Less than half of reports end up with anything done, and they’re using “ai” to process reports.
I dunno what I’m really saying beyond it being a problem, and for folks to watch out with Christmas coming
It’s pretty easy to tell a fake 42 apart from the real thing, but unfortunately usually only when handling it and thus you can’t necessarily identify it from the potato pictures that will inevitably be uploaded to eBay. I’ve never handled one that actually got it all right. The best I’ve ever seen is the TheOne clone, which at least has the decency not to actually say Benchmade on it anywhere.
The cheaper counterfeits usually have cast zinc alloy handles rather than the machined titanium of the genuine thing, which can look 100% convincing in photos but as soon as you touch the thing you know it’s wrong.
At this point I wouldn’t trust any vaguely popular Benchmade model not coming from a completely trusted source not to be fake. The counterfeits of the Bugout, Griptillian, and friends are getting extremely sophisticated now, complete with accurate trademarks and very convincing boxes, even with fake leaflets inside for the Lifesharp program and all the rest of it. You can tell they’re fake if you really know what you’re doing, or more realistically just by looking at the price. But if some shyster tries to sell one for near to list price a lot of people would probably be fooled.
Maybe I ought to do a comparison one of these days.