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StoryBook Ceramics : We Hate Fakes Too |
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 Looking to purchase a McCoy Mammy Cookie Jar?
| If you’re hoping to buy a vintage McCoy Pottery Company made Mammy Cookie Jar, you’ll definitely want to skip shopping on eBay!
We have watched as the percentage of fake ceramics to genuine ceramics, especially in the cookie jar category, has grown ever higher month after month. Legitimate sellers frustrated at having to compete with fraudulent sellers to sell their collectibles continue to leave eBay in droves. Now it appears this exodus has caused the fake/genuine ratio in some categories to hit critical mass.
Only six months ago, there were, on average, about 100 listings returned on any given day for the search “McCoy Mammy cookie jar”. Now the search results return about half that number, a 50% reduction with a devastating side effect.
Today, June 4, 2007, there are 42 items listed at the eBay auction site under the keyword search for “McCoy Mammy cookie jar”. Of these forty-two jars, an unbelievable forty-one of them are fakes!
Here is a screen shot of the listings, in case anyone would like to review or double check our judgment of the jars. I think the pictures speak for themselves.
http://blog.storybookceramics.com/gallery/details.php?image_id=52
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Question: What do McCoy, Shawnee, and Weller Pottery have in common?
| Answer:
Rhyne and Son Importer and Wholesaler in Ringgold, GA.
Confused? So were we.
Around the end of 2005, a new wave of fake vintage cookie jars hit eBay with a vengeance. The first to appear was a figural Mammy cookie jar, marked “McCoy” on the underside.
Following in quick succession was the appearance of a McCoy style Mammy cookie jar with checkered apron, a Smiley Pig and Winnie Pig cookie jar, in both regular and bank head motifs, a Jo-Jo the Clown cookie jar, a Lucky Elephant cookie jar, a Weller Mammy cookie jar, and finally a couple of more generic, vintage, Japanese-made, style basket-handled Black Americana cookie jars. These new jars were substantially unlike any known to have been created by Roger Jensen, or any of his related eBay-centric counterfeiting friends.
The first of these jars to appear presented somewhat of a mystery. This Mammy cookie jar appeared to be of the exact same design and manufacturing technique as an existing product, imported by ACK in their Casa Vero line. That line, consisting of a Mammy and Chef cookie jar and many related kitchenware products, was marked “Casa Vero” “Made in China” on the underside and was widely available on eBay at bargain basement prices.
Suddenly, this same Mammy cookie jar appeared in the eBay fake sellers channel, newly branded underneath as “McCoy”. The jar was unchanged in color or design, except for the vintage style McCoy logo now impressed into the underside. Touted by one fake seller as the “McCoy Fat Mammy” cookie jar, sales skyrocketed. Sellers offering the jar spread quickly.
As similarly marked fake cookie jars, described above, appeared; several noteworthy, shared, characteristics about these items became clear to us, from a technical point of view.
· They were all painted with cold paint. This paint had a decidedly matte finish, was semi-durable (it couldn’t take going through a dishwasher, experiments showed), and seemed to be brushable as well as sprayable.
· Each jar had been subtly resculpted. The changes were relatively minor, when compared to the original jars, but there was definitely an attempt to modify the design enough to protect the creator in a courtroom.
· The jars were marked with a professional stamp. None of the Jensen molds had anything more than a hand scratched “signature” in the bottom, of varying “believability”. Some “marks” actually had misspellings. These new jars had a standardized version of the McCoy and Shawnee markings. The markings too were somewhat changed from the original marks, but were so close as to surely be aimed towards fooling the masses.
A recent search of the US trademark office has revealed critical information in understanding the appearance of these “next generation” fakes. Rhyne and Sons has applied for and has been temporarily granted, trademarks for McCoy, Shawnee, and Weller logos to be used on pottery. These logos, pictured clearly in the trademark applications, are the logos appearing on the new fakes cookie jars on eBay.
Please see this gallery page to view the marks for comparison.
http://blog.storybookceramics.com/gallery/categories.php?cat_id=14
Without actually receiving confirmation from Rhyne and Son, we can only speculate as to the exact nature of their relationship with ACKusa. Given that Rhyne and Son is not a ceramics manufacturer, it certainly appears that they have contracted through ACK to have pottery manufactured in Asia with these new markings, then imported into this country, to be distributed wholesale through their company to resellers. The most compelling factor in this theory is the fact that it was an ACK created jar that first appeared on eBay bearing a Rhyne and Son trademarked logo.
These new jars are now available through all of the usual outlets, including Rosso Wholesale and Glass. What this consolidation of vintage style pottery marks will mean to the fake pottery market overall is still unclear. Will Rhyne and Son begin enforcing “their” trademarks against the old time counterfeiters like Roger Jensen? Will it be easier, or harder, to educate the collecting public given the fake ceramics may become increasingly standardized? We’ll take a look in our next article at what the implications of this development might mean to the secondary collectors market, and what we can do as pottery educators to use this new information to help the novices.
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"Inspired By" Pottery at the National Ceramic Museum & Heritage Center
| I was interested to see this piece at the National Ceramic Museum & Heritage Center. Although not exactly a reproduction, this commissioned piece is openly described as a "McCoy Pottery" inspired work.
National Ceramic Museum Heritage Center
2006 McCoy Inspired Coin Purse Bank Released!
Spring is here and so is the release of the 2006 National Ceramic Museum Commemorative piece. This year we are featuring the "McCoy Inspired Butterfly Coin Purse Bank." Designed by Paul Daniel for the National Ceramic Museum this piece measures 7" wide 5" tall and 2" wide. Each Piece comes in 3 colors and is numbered and stamped with the National Ceramic Museum Logo. However the McCoy Inspired Coin Purse Banks are available only through the Museum so reserve yours today or stop and see them first hand! For more info call or email the museum for pricing and ordering information. 740-697-7021
We hope that this (very cute) bank represents the further development of the process of reclaiming reproduction and 'inspired by" pottery in legitimate ways. |
All publicity is good publicity....
| The effort to educate and combat online fraud almost invariably requires bloggers, websites, and forums to use html links to talk about and expose sellers and wholesalers involved in the trade of suspect goods. This effort, which we applaud and engage in as well, is unfortunately, from a “publicity” standpoint, a double-edged sword.
By talking about an unscrupulous website, we inadvertently publicize it, and even worse, the links WE use to expose the site can ultimately count in that sites favor for search engine placement and exposure, unless we adopt a simple practice to combat it.
Google, MSN, and Yahoo (the big three) crawl blogs and websites regularly, checking and calculating links and factoring those links into the algorithms that will determine which websites you see when you type in a search term or keyword. A search for “Mammy Cookie Jar”, for example, performed today on Google, will return links to eBay, to TIAS, and unfortunately, to Rosso Wholesale and Glass on the first page. Part of the reason Rosso’s website is placed so high in the search results is because of many mentions on the Internet by forums, blogs and websites linking their website to the sale of (fraudulent) “Mammy cookie jars”.
One solution to this is simply to never place a live URL link to a suspect website in any post. However, realistically, this makes education more difficult and hampers the effort to get the word out about counterfeit and mismarked pottery. Fortunately, the search engines offer a better solution, which if adopted widely, could turn the tide on over publicizing fraud sites unintentionally.
When creating a URL, the common convention in html is to type “< a href=”http://www.yoursite.com/”>Your Link Text< /a> to create a link to the website. This link is “counted” by the crawlers to your website.
If you do NOT want a link to be counted, you can construct the same link this way:
“< a href=”http://www.yoursite.com/” rel=”nofollow”>Your Link Text< /a>
(Please note the extra space before the opening "a" and before the closing "a" in the example code to allow the html to display properly in this post)
The “nofollow” attribute tells the search engine to ignore the link. Your users will see the same link, but the search engines will not. This will allow you to talk freely about websites and link to suspect items, without giving the sellers of these items any unintentional “help” in their search engine placement.
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After a long hiatus, an Ebay update.....
| I recently read a thread on eBay's "Trust and Safety" Forum Board that disclosed, in my opinion, one of the most important pieces of information regarding fake pottery sellers to come out of eBay in years. Many of us have spend countless hours dialogging with eBay about the problem of "career" fake pottery and glass sellers on their website, only to be amazed at the lengths their representatives will go to in ignoring seller violations, pottery experts, and even US law when it comes to the issue of counterfeit vintage pottery. Over the years, getting a definitive statement from eBay regarding their position on fake pottery on their website has proven elusive. They send many mixed messages. On one hand, they decry counterfeits of ANY kind, pledge to do "everything" they can to keep the website free from fraud, and then systematically ignore the fact that their site is the #1 haven for fake pottery sellers in the world at this point. On this forum thread, a pottery collector has run across "Miss Faye" and discovered the world of "fake pottery" for the first time. He is angry at first, pledges to "do something" and over the course of the thread, is disillusioned as the long timers educate him to the reality of eBay. Need help with a reproduction seller In the midst of this depressing, and all too common, thread, a new piece of information suddenly jumped out. To really understand the significance of the information, it's important to understand the source, Jim Griffith. From eBay's website: "Griff," as he is popularly known, has been the foremost education expert on eBay since 1996 when he was invited to join the company as its first customer support representative. For the past three years in his role as both eBay ambassador and instructor, Griff has been traveling around the country leading eBay University seminars and attending community gatherings on how to buy and sell on eBay. Griff has shared his eBay expertise with audiences across the country. In addition to presenting at dozens of eBay University events, he's made more than 100 local and national television and radio appearances. Griff is also the author of the Official eBay Bible and host of eBay Radio. Anything Jim Griffith says can reasonably be assumed to be the position of the top eschalon of eBay. It's almost impossible to fathom that he would express any stance that is out of synch with the top of the eBay totem pole. ericaluv, an eBay member, writes in her posting to the thread of the following email discussion she had with Jim Griffith: (ericaluv)Maybe this information will save anyone who feels that reporting listings like this will get anywhere. I had a the pleasure of emailing back and forth with Jim Griffith to finally get some kind of explanation as to why after my 100's of violaiton reports resulted in absolutely nothing. see below for his answer. Jim Griffith works for ebay and works with the CEO Meg Whitman. me (ericaluv):I sell a lot of the same items and know 110% these items are brand new. So again, you are telling me it is not in violation of ebay's rules to list a fake reproduction as the name of the real one which goes for a lot more money as well as saying the age of the item is unknown even though it is brand new? Jim Griffith: As long as the actual name or brand used is not currently held as intellectual property by being copyright or trademark protected, then yes, it is ok to list the item on eBay. I bolded the entire response for emphasis, because it CANNOT be overstated. According to Jim, if the item is not currently covered under a "live" trademark or copyright, it is "OK" to list a fraudulently marked fake on eBay and not disclose it is a reproduction. That is incredible, but that is what the man said. Going on, ericaluv presses: me (ericaluv):: “... you feel that "no chips or cracks" is not a misleading statement? if looking to purchase a brand new car online wouldn't it strike you as odd if the description stated the car has no dents or scratches?...” Jim Griffith: No I wouldn’t. In fact, I would appreciate the fact that the seller is making the condition of the item clear. So.... If you have EVER spent one second of your time trying to educate eBay about fake pottery and fake pottery sellers, it appears you, like us, have been wasting your time. We have all bemoaned on websites galore that "eBay doesn't care".... and you know what.... "eBay doesn't care". Straight from the horse's mouth. |
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