I think a point that many on here are missing is that the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of reproduction and/or fantasy items that are available are made not by collectors, purists, hobbyists, etc but by just your average run-of-the-mill businessman that is looking for a profit. Take a company like Ande Rooney. They've been making small porcelains for 30 years!!! They don't mark or date, they just put a sticker on the back with the history of the company & logo being used. For as long as they've I've been around this hobby/business, I've occassionally witnessed people spending original type dollars on Ande Rooney signs, which is silly since the back doesn't have porcelain on it at all and there's not shelving (just screen-print over white porcelain). They are the single biggest producer of repo porcelain signs in the world. But, they aren't the problem. People like me who made repo parts, decals & globes for restorations aren't the problem. Guys like Darryl aren't the problem. Guys who either a) make reproductions and then age them in a pre-meditated attempt to get original prices for repo items -AND- b)people who take the Andy Rooney type signs, shoot them with a bb-gun and throw vinegar on them to age them.....THESE ARE YOUR PROBLEMS. You guys can say, "if you make it, date it" til Jesus returns, and it's not going to make the problem stop, heck it really isn't going to help.

Has anybody stopped to ask themselves, why this is even a problem to begin with? The answer is, because this type of collectible got SO POPULAR and SO EXPENSIVE!!!!! That's the paradox, conundrum, damned if you do/damned if you don't situation this hobby and other collectible hobbies will always face. You can't have your cake and eat it too!?!?!?! As the values of your collections has risen, so has the amount of fraud that goes on in the advertising collectibles hobby! If this stuff wasn't so rare, desirable, and valuable, there would be ZERO incentive for crooks to counterfeit & deceive.

The last thing I'll address is this type of statement: "the only reason you wouldn't mark a product is for future deception". I call BS on that. I made literally thousands of pumps parts & decals, repo pumps and other decor and the majority of the time, there was no de-notation that the items were made in modern times. 99% of the stuff was so glaringly new, it never occurred to me to mark it. Heck, there are members of this VERY FORUM that COMPLAINED about the merchandise that WAS MARKED!!! And I think they had just as good of a point. A lot of guys didn't like to put a pair of pump faces or a globe on pump that said NEW, REPRODUCTION or 2001 on it. They said, it queered up their restoration, and really if you think about, when's the last time you saw a new bumper on a '67 Corvette that had REPOP stamped on it??

All I'm saying is, what happened here on this thread....basically the "outing" of a major violater helps the 10,000 people that look on here and that's about as good as your going to do. As long as the temptation is there (i.e. $$$) there will be people that either counterfeit OR doctor up repos made with good intentions. How do you mark something well enough that somebody can't alter it and make it look real AND still be able to sell it??