Seven For All Mankind

Seven For All Mankind

The basics: How do you determine authenticity of Sevens

Before jumping to the finer points of eyeing the jeans, the following warning signs will help you even if you don’t have the eye for picking out the reals yet. I do recommend though that if you have the ability in your area, go to a store that carries Sevens and inspect the washes, distressing, and tags closely so that you get an idea of what you are trying to match!

1) Cut number – The cut number on Sevens is a batch number, like today’s batch might be numbered 709101, tomorrow’s 709102, etc. There are only a handful of jeans (maybe a few hundred) made with each cut number. When counterfeiters get ahold of a pair to fake, they will take a real cut number and produce mass quantities of their jeans with it. After all, they are trying to make cheap junk… keeping costs cheap means not wasting resources changing the cut numbers constantly! As a result, now the market starts to see floods of jeans with the same cut number. These are known as “common fake cut numbers.” When these are identified, they are posted to the following website maintained by a super-cool chick named Bianca, and hence often referred to here as “Bianca’s Site” – Keine Chance den Fakes! . Bookmark this page. This is your bible. It is in German, and you will need to translate it at babelfish.altavista.com or google translator if you want to read the text, but even without translating or speaking German you can scan the list of numbers there for the one on the pair you’re looking at. If it’s on there, there’s a 99.9% chance that it’s fake. There ARE real pairs with those numbers, but they are like needles in a haystack. There ARE fake pairs that do NOT have one of the numbers on the list, so just because it is not on there does not guarantee it is real, but this is still a great starting point.

• The other way to research the cut number is to do an eBay search for the number, check off to search by title and description, and see how many pop up. If more than 3 pairs come up with that cut number, it is a warning sign

• If a seller is selling multiples of the exact same pair, and all have the same cut number – warning sign

2) Item location

• Avoid items from sellers located in Turkey, China, Phillipines, Hong Kong, Bulgaria, any other obscure country. These are all counterfeiting hubs where there are no repercussions to this type of activity.

3) Seller Red Flags

• Seller is selling a ton of Sevens, especially hard to find ones, like for instance 30 pairs of various crystal styles

• Seller is selling many pairs of brand new with tags jeans at dirt cheap buy-it-nows. Remember, if it seems too good to be true, it is. NWT jeans cannot be profited on at $40 a pop.

• Run a forum search for your potential seller’s ID. If any threads come up, read them… there are probably mentions of any major known fake seller, or any seller with a reputation for any other sketchy behavior, as well as known authentic sellers.