Oh Hey, Look: Another Fake Akalabeth!
As Jocksitter Dragon noted to me in an email, it would appear “our old friend in Texas” is up to his usual tricks, and is once again attempting to sell a forged “vintage” copy of Akalabeth on eBay. The good news, this time around, is that the items is likely to go for around $40, maybe $50 at most. Not that it should sell at all, of course…but at least it’s not going for hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Quoth Jocksitter:
The font on the Akalabeth demon cover art is wrong and the Akalabeth CPC disk is in the same light printing as his other forgeries. Plus I believe all the CPC Akalabeth’s have write protect tabs on the disks that were placed under the labels.
And here’s the image accompanying the sale:
It’s a faaaaaake!
He’s right, of course: the genuine Akalabeth manual used a very stylized font for its title, rather than block letters. Sloppy, as forgeries go.
It’s already over $100. As it goes up I fear more people may bid thinking the higher price means it legitimate.
I wish there was a way to prosecute this guy, but I’m sure the police wouldn’t know what we are talking about. “You see officer, the font is wrong!”
Sucks. At the very least, it’s a shame you can’t comment on the product to warn people.
I hope people have been reporting the item as a fake using eBay reporting system.
1. Copyright and trademark
2. Counterfeit item or authenticity disclaimer
3. Counterfeit, fake, or replica items
US Supreme Court ruled video games as art. Auction violates eBay art policies for prohibited items.
You can report the item to ebay, see instructions on how to report: http://img594.imageshack.us/img594/9310/akalabeth.png
Well, I tried to report it. You get like 100 characters to report and you can’t post links so I’m sure it will be ignored, but who knows.
It’s been pulled by ebay… yeah!
Item removed! success! we need to do a mass report every time these pop up.
That’s not a fake! – The Demon Cover with the Block letters your talking about is a original Ad on $ale for like ever; from an eCrater website called Just about Everything, here:
http://justabouteverything.ecrater.com/p/5489267/akalabeth-1981-computer-ad
It goes for $4.95…
I bought a copy in January & it has another game Ad on the reverse side called AppleOIDS.
I even called eBay & the agent wasn’t sure if this eBay sale was pulled or what, I asked for a supervisor & he directed me to an item advisory expert & he mentioned the Seller of this particular Auction pulled it due to an off-eBay sale via Only PayPal transaction.
Dammit I missed it, by about a Year! LOL.