Getty Image / Patrick T. FALLON / AFP
- U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officers intercepted a shipment of hundreds of counterfeit championship rings in Louisville
- The haul of counterfeit rings include Super Bowl fakes (pictured above), NBA and MLB Championship fakes, and the shipment was headed for a residence in Florida
- Read more NFL stories here
The secondary market for sports memorabilia has exploded in recent years. It is expected the sports memorabilia market will jump from $370 billion two years ago to $522 billion in six years from now. Keeping counterfeits out of the market is vital to the healthy growth of the sports memorabilia industry and U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers just made a very healthy seizure of counterfeit championship rings.
It was only two months ago that CBP officers seized 1,400 fake championship rings worth an estimated $1 million. That seizure was championship rings for NBA, MLB, NFL, NASCAR, and college basketball while this latest seizure is more narrow in scope.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers in Louisville, Kentucky intercepted ’10 Milwaukee Bucks NBA championship rings, 30 Tampa Bay Buccaneers Super Bowl rings, 80 Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl rings and 110 Atlanta Braves World Series rings.’ according to a press release on Monday. The counterfeit championship rings originated from China and were being mailed to a residence in Wesley Chapel, Florida just north of Tampa.
Border Patrol Seizes Hundreds Of Counterfeit Championship Rings
U.S. Customs and Border Protection
According to the CBP press release, the 230 counterfeit championship rings would have fetched over $345,000 on the black market. And there’s really no telling of how much they could’ve sold for after the initial purchase if someone wanted to turn around and flip them after they’d been seemingly legitimized.
How real do these counterfeits look? Those Tampa Bay Buccaneers rings in the photograph at the beginning of this article are fake. They were recently seized by US Customs and Border Protection and displayed at LAX Airport as an example of how convincing the fakes can appear.
Louisville Port Director Thomas Mahn had this to say about the massive seizure of counterfeit championship rings: “This is just another example of the work our officers do to protect consumers and the U.S. economy. As consumers increasingly purchase from online or third-party vendors, our officers are at the frontline to guard against defrauders expecting to make money selling fake merchandise.”
The CBP press release cites some staggering statistics on how prevalent counterfeit and pirated goods are in the U.S. economy. It states that Americans spend over $100 BILLION every year “on intellectual property rights (IPR) infringing goods” and the United States economy falls victim to 20% of illegally sold counterfeit goods worldwide every year.
While $345,000 worth of 230 counterfeit championship rings might not seem like enough to flood the market, the CBP intercepts an average of $9 million “worth of products with Intellectual Property Rights violations” every single day. It’s wild to think about how much is slipping through the cracks if the USA is still accounting for 20% of all money spent on counterfeit goods…
For a closer look at the authentic Tampa Bay Buccaneers Super Bowl rings you can scroll through this Instagram gallery or check out the video below:
and
I’m amazed that counterfeiters think they can flood the market with fakes when there are only a few hundred of these to begin with…