Originally Posted by
RustyC
The last thing you want to do is try to pass them off as real, but that doesn't mean money can't be made on fakes. Way back around 2000 and before, when eBay was smaller and didn't have huge attention all around, a few sharp people living in places like Bangkok were doing very well selling knock-off purses. Maybe something ridiculous would be on "Sex and the City" or somewhere else for $500-$1,000 and they'd sell something that'd look just like it for $125-150 on a $25-40 cost basis.
The last thing they wanted was for someone buying to think it was the original item, and 95-98% of buyers knew it wasn't and just wanted something just like it for a fraction of the cost. Listings would hint at the non-original nature but usually couldn't come out and say it.
But the heyday of that lasted only a few years, and by the mid-aughts everything was getting heavily lawyered and the brands got all upset and even got the French government to criminalize trafficking in the fakes (yet more draconian punishment for non-violent crime at the behest of powerful special interests in the name of revenue).
I am not endorsing the strategy the person I know used, but just saying I really think this would be one of the few options to get a good return on a product.
Was common in Asia, at least a few years ago, to be stopped there coming back to the US and have your bag checked for goods. If you had 3-4 pairs of fake sunglasses / headphones, normally OK as could be gifts for friends. But getting above this number of items usually resulted in them being confiscated, from my experiences.
We live in such a global world I am not sure what products you could find in person and bring back to sell in another region that someone else could not find "online" for close to the same price.