Fake or Original? How to know it?

We have seen some fake itineraries recently being sold on Ebay so I will try to give you some tips on this entry in order to help you when thinking about getting a new itinerary for your collection.

It seems quite simple to copy an itinerary and sell it online as you can imagine. You just pay a few bucks for a bunch of photocopies and then you sell them on Ebay where you can get even hundreds of dollars.

I strongly recommend you to follow these tips in order to make sure you are not buying a fake itinerary book:

1. Check the PICTURES that you can find on this blog and compare them to the ones that the seller is showing. Ask the seller as many pictures as you need. Details are important. Pictures on this blog are always from original itinerary books so you can use them all as a reference.

2. Make sure the book you want to buy hasn't got PHOTOCOPY MARKS. If you take an original book, take out the spiral bound and then try to put a new spiral bound on the copies, the original holes will be for sure noticeable on the copies.

3. SPIRAL BOUND POSITION is also important. If the seller wants to avoid the marks I mentioned above, he will probably change the position where the spiral bound originally was. The trick would be to move the spiral bound to the right...not too much.....but enough to avoid those photocopy marks by leaving them out on the left of the book. So one of the things that can make you think you are in front of a fake is that the design/text on the cover is too close to the spiral bound and..... on the right side of the cover you see too much space without text/design.

4. Another important thing to check is the SPIRAL BOUND KIND. Every itinerary book has got only one kind of spiral bound so once again check the pictures on this blog to know which is the right spiral bound for every itinerary book. For example, the itinerary book for Popmart Tour US Leg 1 is blue so if you find this book with a black spiral bound you are probably in front of a fake. In addition to the color, it is also important to check the material (plastic, wire,...) and the size or diameter.

5. One more thing to check is the COVER of the book. Some itinerary books where issued with a laminated cover. Those books are quite difficult to copy as the cover will look quite different....I mean....it's not easy to get a good result if you photocopy a laminated cover.

6. And last but not least the SMELL of the book. Off course you can not check that if you are buying an itinerary book on the internet but you can do it when you have it at home. An itinerary book from early tours has to smell like a bunch of old papers 10 or 20 years old....because that's actually what it is. Itinerary books from 360º are off course quite new to smell like that...Vertigo books probably too....but when we talk about Elevation tour...that was more than 10 years ago......believe me...they smell quite "bad".

If after checking all those points above you still have doubts, just ASK ME. I'm happy to help you and to avoid collectors to be ripped off. You can contact me on the blog and also on our U2 itinerary books group on Facebook.

Don't let the bastards grind you down !  :)

The Collector