[Terabitten]

Many of these guitars are handcrafted by Chinese and Korean luthiers and so closely mimic the originals that experts from Gibson had to be called in to verify that the guitars were fake. In many cases, these instruments far surpass Gibsons in quality and playability!

I beg to differ. They are made "after hours" in the Epiphone factories in China, but they use crap wood (usually plywood). They're not anywhere close to real Gibsons in terms of construction or playability. These things flooded ebay about a year ago, and it was just a matter of time before they started showing up in the US on resale.

[Drew68]

I beg to differ. They are made "after hours" in the Epiphone factories in China, but they use crap wood (usually plywood). They're not anywhere close to real Gibsons in terms of construction or playability. These things flooded ebay about a year ago, and it was just a matter of time before they started showing up in the US on resale.

It is hard to say what quality these instruments were. I've seen some Fender and Gibson fakes that were horrible instruments and very obviously fake in that they didn't even really look like the instruments that they were supposedly counterfeits of.

On the flip side, there are very convincing counterfeits out there that could easily command several thousand dollars from knowledgeable buyers.