HAMPTON ROADS, Va - Ever wonder how to spot a real or fake designer bag?
Worth the Wait consignment shop in Virginia Beach shows News 3's Leondra Head how to spot a real designer.
The store sells authentic designer bags.
"We’ve sold two Louis Vuittons and a Gucci today," Corissa Henningsen with Worth the Wait said.
The store gets several designer handbags a week that they resell if the item is authentic. Before taking in a designer bag, the store will test the bag to see if is real. Here are some tips they use to spot a real handbag.
Sales associates at the store say they look for a code inside a Louis Vuitton bag to see if it’s authentic or not.
"All Louis Vuitton produced after 1980 have a date code," Henningsen said.
The date code on LV handbags is hidden and discrete. The first 2 letters indicate the location and the last digits indicate the date it was made.
"If it’s a newer-looking bag, that does not have a date code, that’s a red flag. If it’s an older-looking bag that does not have a date code, that’s very possible that it’s still authentic," Henningsen said.
To tell if a bag is authentic, here’s another tip:
"The second thing I look for is the liner in the leather and snitching. The snitching is always going to be perfect," Henningsen said.
Worth the Wait consignment shop in Virginia Beach shares tips on how to spot a real designer pic.twitter.com/7t7AAw3Mzw
— Leondra Head (@Leondrahead) March 27, 2023
Worth the wait only sells real designer items.
But perpetrators have been trying to make huge profits off of fake designer items.
Just last week, Norfolk Customs and Border officers said they seized 68 items worth more than $700,000 that came from South Korea. The items included fake Gucci and Louis Vuitton.
"There are people out there that say 'I know it’s fake but I can afford and I’ll get it and have a fake one'. They don’t know how it was made. Are they using child labor to make those or forced labor, you just don’t know," Mak Laria, a Norfolk Custom & Border Protection officer said.
Laria couldn’t say if the suspects have been caught out of concern for jeopardizing the case. But says Homeland Security is investigating the seizure of counterfeit items.
"If they are federally prosecuted, the first offense could be up to 10 years incarceration. For repeat offenders, it can be as many as 20 years incarceration," Laria said.
Norfolk Customs & Border office says they see around 15 to 20 shipments of counterfeit items a year at a retail value of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
