Counterfeit Surefire SW01 Fatty & Slim tailcaps + Z49

[Rat]

Its good to see not to many of these fakes have been showing up in peoples collections.

I finally got a refund today from PayPal. It was an extremely hard process they make it very difficult and give you very tight time frames to come up with the documentation they want. I had six days to come up with a document of authenticity from a Surefire dealer just before Christmas. It was a hard tusk as we do not have many dealers down here. They would not give me an extension. I was very lucky I found a dealer one day before time was up who was willing to spend the time to authenticate it and wright a report out.
Than they made a mistake on the very last document (guarantee to destroy counterfeit item) I sent in and they emailed me with a decline on my claim. I was bowing steam the poor girl who took my phone call.
If you ever make a claim with PayPal make sure you keep records of all your calls and emails sent into them. They had sent me an email with a notification of receiving that last document one day before dead line. It was just an office mistake all the email times & dates where fine when they rechecked them.\

:wave:

 

[RI Chevy]

Good to hear that you made out OK with your claim! :thumbsup:

 

[Kif]

Here are some pictures of two of my SW01 Slim tail caps
They are both authentic to me
Any comment?

 

[Rat]

Here are some pictures of two of my SW01 Slim tail caps
They are both authentic to me
Any comment?

Yes they look good to me also :thumbsup:

cheers

 

[LightJaguar]

Oh man I have an SW01 that I paid a good chunk of change awhile back. I hope it's not fake. When I get home that's the first thing I'm checking.
I do have a fake Surefire SW02 that I knowingly bought a long time ago from a seller at the MP. I don't have a problem with clones as long as they are sold as clones. I could use one in a beat up C2 that I got not long ago.
I have been away from collecting and have not kept up on the Surefire stuff. However I'm surprised that more SW01 are not being sold around since there is "more" of them circulating. Maybe people are hoarding them too.

 

[RedLED]

What a nightmare to have these fakes to worry about.

This is a wonderful thread and I just checked my last remaining Z48, not that I thought it to be a fake as I bought several from Surefire directly in or around 2000/2001/2002 I wanted to check to see if there had been any design or minor engineering changes, and mine looks identical to the one Rat has posted.

I dont know how long they were produced, I don't think it was more than just a few years? If they had been in continuous production from the time I bought mine, you could expect some up grades or differences in the design, and the more changes made makes it harder to figure all of this out.

I know for certain I bought these as soon as they came out because in those days, myself and my friends wanted a Tailcap switch for our 6P's, which were standard issue for us gun & knife guy's, mainly because we did not have or even know about different brands, I only remember long gone Pentagon as a SF look a like, and we certainly never had any idea of custom lights, we did not collect Surefire lights, we carried and used them. I suppose that it was the early days of custom lights, with more production brands popping up, and then by 2004 we knew much more by learning of this forum and since then, there seem to be thousands of flashlights of all kinds.

it is a shame there is always someone to ruin everything, no matter what it is. Who would think that there would be counterfeit flashlight parts? I liked it better when it was just money, Rolex and Louis Vuitton that were faked, and I am a Rolex collector, God that sounds awful, but nevertheless I learned of this forum from the watch site I check on for Rolex.

It does not matter if you get taken by a counterfeiter for a $30,000 watch, a $300 tailcap switch or a twenty dollar bill; it has to be the same sinking feeling.

I hope my chronography of when I bought my Z48/49 switches helps someway in all of this. At the least we don't have to deal with 15 different editions of minor design and engineering changes.

If there is an update on this or a comment from Surefire, I would like to hear what anyone has learned.

RL

 

[Bullzeyebill]

BTTT.

Bill