Does anyone know how to recognize an illegal Sapphire copy?

[Bebbe]

Hi,

I would like to know if anyone on the board knows how to distinguish an original factory sealed Ginga Fukkei Densetsu Sapphire from an illegal copy of it.
I saw one with the seal stripe as low as e.g. japanese Dreamcast games and long plastic bars on the front plasticcover and I saw one with the seal stripe a little higher like some PC Engine titles and short plastic bars on the front plasticcase.

thanks in advance and take care, Bebbe

[Bebbe]

Here the pictures for a better understanding:

[Anonymous]

Taken from a warning about fake Sapphires from Videogameimports.com - The orange colour (see the Arcade CD logos at the front, side and back) is a brighter shade in the counterfeit version. The original is slightly darker and is extremely lightly 'dotted' with with very tiny white dots. They are barely visible to the eye, but they are there. Looks like the counterfeiters were unable to replicate this.

The artwork on the front, of the girl, appears very slightly out of focus.

The most noticeable part is on the back cover, where there are pictures of the 2 Arcade cards. The counterfeit version is much more fuzzy looking, and the picture of the planet is unclear. With the picture of the the Arcade Card Duo, on the original version, you can see a very thin white outline around the part of the card with the artwork on it. On the counterfeit version, there is no white outline.

Suppose this only really helps if you have one to compare against, but hope this goes someway towards helping.

[Kung-Fu Monkey]

That's me above.

Surely, with only 1,000 copies in existence, you've gotta be damn lucky to find an unopened Sapphire. That's why i'm not bidding on the one on Ebay - very unsure.

Anyways, hello all, I'm new. I collect shooters on DC, Saturn and PC Engine. Nice to meet u all.

[Bebbe]

thanks for the help =).
The one on ebay.de is from a trustworthy person I know, he has most stuff from Yahoo.jp. But I saw this other version and wondered if there are 2 different sealings and 2 different cases when there were supposedly only 1.000 copies.
To few for me to make two production runs, though.

[Bebbe]

doublepost...