Help! Are these pins I was given fake?

[Hope_2002]

Are any of these pins I was given authentic pins? I’m not sure how to tell as I am a new collector! 

[firechief18]

Not sure where you got the pins, however, from the pictures I don't believe any of them are legit pins.

[disneyfanatic01]

They all are fake/scrapper pins. If you bought them in a bulk lot from eBay, Amazon etc. for cheap then they are definitely not authentic.

[slidetackle]

Question.  The surfboard pin has an FAC but is most likely a scrapper.  Have we gotten to the point where the most probable way to confirm authenticity is to buy the pin at a park or through a Disney website, store, etc? 

 

[michaelmichael]

@slidetackle Technically, yes; every pin can theoretically be faked, and the only way to confirm authenticity beyond a reasonable doubt is to get it from the source. Since pins vary so widely in their manufacturing methods and partners, that's the only surefire tell that can be applied to every Disney pin. However, while any pin could be faked, some pins are faked more often than others, or faked more uniformly than others. If, say, you have one legitimate pin and one manufacturer creating a single counterfeit variant, then you could be fairly confident that the differences between the fake one and the real one would distinguish them definitively, and you would be able to tell them apart every time. But in practice, multiply that by dozens of counterfeiters, and by thousands of pins, each with the possibility of being made in multiple factories (different FAC numbers!) or with slightly different molds. That's what makes it so difficult to identify fakes - each individual faked pin could have its tells, but that means learning the tells for every individual pin.

 

FAC numbers, to circle back to the main question, can still be used as one of these minor tells. For some pins that classically have screen-printed FAC numbers, a stamped FAC would fairly safely indicate a fake. But no, the presence of a FAC number does not itself confirm authenticity - it's a measure toward it, but does not assure it. Just like fakes of LE Paris pins: each authentic LE is numbered, but it doesn't stop forgers from just printing multiple with the same number.

[disneyfanatic01]

Agree on the Paris LE pins. I traded for a Paris LE pin at one of the trading events only to realize later that the number on the back said #75 out of 50.