SME V Tonearm on eBay Hong Kong Sellers are FAKE!!!

Real SME is beautifully machined and fit and finish is perfection. Fake SME in the photos is made with every part being rough cast out of something. Fit and finish is garbage, misaligned parts, gaps, etc. Printing is garbage. Leads are wrong.

All the way down to the fake Canare tonearm cable (which SME never even used before) with wrong printing.

These people are 100% disgusting criminals. Report. And stay away.

This seller is also eBay ing this $19000. https://www.ebay.com/itm/SME-3012R-Gold-Improved-Precision-Stereo-Tonearm-Working-Is-Good/2534929106...

Is this fake, too?

As well as all these items:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Nagra-BPC-MM-MC-Phnon-Good-For-Turntable-And-Cartridge-Ortofon-Denon/253458...

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Fidelity-Research-FR-FR-64S-Tonearm-Arm/253462060638?hash=item3b03841e5e:g:...

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Thales-Easy-tonearm/253458738546?hash=item3b03516d72:g:rtoAAOSwGwlaJo-c

And tons more. He has a pretty impressive forgery operation going.

@raymonda I don’t know if all of those are fake. But for example, the picture showing the Nagra’s internals has been stolen from one of the big online review sites. So that’s a red flag already. I don’t have time to go through everything to verify.

Some stuff might be real, some fake, others may have real stolen pictures but who knows what you’ll get.

SME I know by heart, so the V they have listed on eBay is without a doubt a fake item.

Another giveaway, I just looked at the history and they sell SME V several times a month for as long as eBay allows one to look back. For the other items they do not have previous sales, so they might be real.

Think logically, where are they getting so many V tonearms to sell used?

I love the word 'replica'.