Attn: Kristi! bold Ebay seller claims 2x Para exclusive Ebay only

[awa54]

Hi all,

my previous post about these knives was made before I contacted the seller... who insists that these knives were ordered as an exclusive straight from Spyderco.

I smell some probable BS, but would love to have confirmation one way or the other from Spyderco.
If they're real, we may well want to start a thread in the GD forum, so people will know about this.
...or, if they're fake we ought to report this seller to Ebay by the dozens or hundreds, so they'll think twice about doing it again!

https://www.ebay.com/itm/204227462329
https://www.ebay.com/itm/204227466609

Here's my correspondence:
(messages are reverse order, read bottom to top)

[JRinFL]

Your links to the items still work, however a search does not bring up those listings (for me anyway) and the sellers store is empty. I think Ebay did a take down on this seller. I'll be curious if we hear more about this.

[Doc Dan]

Maybe someone ordered these and decided not to take delivery and this guy bought them? Maybe he coughed up enough money to get an exclusive made? Both are possible.

Let's wait to hear from TazKristi.

[Danke]

That's a special one for sure because it's got Eric and Sal's marks on it.

[Mushroom]

Wow! I’m not going to say for sure one way or the other but to me it looks real. The poor grammar in the messages from the seller stands out as a little bit sketchy though. The biggest red flag to me is that they're shown with the clip tip up.

[awa54]

Their Ebay store is full of items as of 1pm est on 1/31/23
Current Paras have both Sal and Eric's mark, as seen on the Spyderco web site.

The clip position is certainly a tell and character of the imprints looks like a "good" fake to me, but the image quality is poor enough that it's tough to be sure...

I'm hoping Kristi will enlighten us.

[JRinFL]

Their Ebay store is full of items as of 1pm est on 1/31/23
Current Paras have both Sal and Eric's mark, as seen on the Spyderco web site.

The clip position is certainly a tell and character of the imprints looks like a "good" fake to me, but the image quality is poor enough that it's tough to be sure...

I'm hoping Kristi will enlighten us.

Ugh, you are correct. Ebay thought I was connecting from Brazil last time I checked the site. Set it back to USA and the store is full.

The red color seems off for a Spyderco, to me at least.

[awa54]

....

The red color seems off for a Spyderco, to me at least.

Oh, yeah it does!


immediately made me think of these:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/234677073976?h ... SwuR1jDNFg

[Danke]

No PM3 here but the Crucarta PM2 I have has both signatures.

Still has to be fake; one has the colour listed as "Digi Camo" and the other as "Black" seems like just careless cut and paste.

There is a lot of stuff for sale on eBay and at a super low-fi store.

My common sense is tingling.

[TazKristi]

Hey, everyone: We're looking into it. We've never produced a Para 3 or Para Military 2 in that exact configuration. It's possible that they have stock models that they have customized, but it's not an exclusive from us and shouldn't be sold as such. We've forwarded everything to our legal team for review.

Thank you for bringing it to our attention!

Kristi

[awa54]

The attached snip of my Ebay messaging doesn't seem to scale well in some browsers, so here's a plain text version (modified so that it's in the correct order):


1) me: Which supplier commissioned this Exclusive?

2)seller: Why do you ask ?

3)me: Because if they aren't an exclusive they're fake.

4)seller: Why would a knife be fake when it was purchased custom from Spyderco ?

5)me: so you're saying it's an exclusive?

6)seller: It’s an exclusive knife for us - both the para 2 and the para 3

7)me: Does your store have a web site (not on Ebay)?

8)seller: That’s in the works. Not ready for ready at the moment.

9)me: so just the Ebay for now... I'm going to do you a huge favor and start a thread on the Spyderco Forum so you can sell out of these in 30 minutes, just like every other Para 2 or 3 Sprint does!

10)seller: You would that for me ?

11)me: Heck yeah!

12)seller: Well let’s see if it works! I appreciate your assistance.


...sorry, I couldn't help trolling a little at the end, I wanted to see what sort of response it might get.

[akapennypincher]

Creative writing what sellers do. Like when I was kid selling Newspaper subscriptions. My record was 27 in one night of knocking doors.

[awa54]

As of Thursday afternoon, both "Spyderco" auctions had been removed.