Sometimes it is impossible to know which cards are original and which are pirates. That’s why it is also impossible to be “the police of the world” in these cases.
I have ordered FOTW cards only once, in the net, from the Postcardsmarket.com . The quality of the cards was an disappointment to me. So what? I have not to order them any more.
The Blue Cat cards (by artist Rina Zeniuk), for example, are in different sizes in different net shops. They are available in Mymagicard.com (from Russia) and ACARDS.BY (from Belarus) and postcards.in.ua (from Ukraine) and lovelycards.ru (from Russia) and strannik-postcards.ru (from Russia) and perhaps even more. They are not similar.
That’s because there is no shop that has the exclusive rights to use the work. Artists can sell licenses to as many publishers as they like. The publishers may then print the artwork and sell it. So it’s normal that they vary in size and backside design. It happens with lots of stock photos, too - and it’s totally legal if the publisher has purchased the licence to use it.
Good morning to you all
Thank you for sharing your experiences, advices, and the warm wishes. I really appreciate it.
Special thanks to @mihneaR for the explanation about fake FOTW and what to do when you found yourself receiving what seems to be a fake card. Thank you for taking the time to write it all and share it with us.
To prevent yourself from buying and sending fake FOTW, I think the only thing you can do is to buy them only from postcardsmarket.com.
IMHO, it’s difficult to prevent yourself from receiving a fake card. In doing swaps here in the forum you see the card only in picture. Unless the card is really ugly that you can notice it’s a fake, from the picture. In official postcrossing you don’t know what card you’ll get until it’s in your hand.
Keep calm, keep on smiling and go on with Postcrossing
It might sound too fantastic. Once I got self-printed copies of FOTW India. I don’t know who sent them to me because there was to return address. But I was very excited to receive these cards.
I sent of them to my Chinese friend and after receiving she pointed out that size of my card didn’t match thr official FoTW cards. Luckily, no one got chested and I learned before doing anymore swaps.
To give benefit of doubt, your sender might also be unaware that their card is pirated one. So, it might not be intentional
Unfortunately, some people do not know if their postcards are original ones or pirated ones, if they bought them from postcard shops.
A similar situation actually happened to me before when I swapped a Jetoy postcard. I received a Jetoy postcard(I won’t specify the country), and sadly it was pirated one - the image is not clear and pixelated. But the sender mentioned on their post that it’s original! It turned out that the sender didn’t know that the postcard was pirated one
Selling, buying and sending pirated postcards must not be accepted, as not only it is deceiving people, but also it is stealing the artists’ artworks! Sorry it happened to you
P.s. I just noticed that this topic was posted quite a long time ago
