Looking for info on “Top Stitch” – sheepskin/Irving-style jacket (Made in UK)

[Zoro]

Yes, but the original seller who is selling the Top Stitch jacket (with some of the same pictures in his listing) claims that it’s a vintage piece bought in England at an air show... and I was so close to buying it…
I can’t believe it… maybe the Irving jacket just isn’t for me — I clearly don’t have enough knowledge to navigate this! I was lucky to catch this.

That's the problem: Perhaps the original seller is telling the truth. Or maybe he's not lying and just wrong (aka mistakenly thinks it's shearling fur). I would be wary to find out, though.

I also think the shearling market is a bumpy road. It's been a trendy garment for the last couple years (now it's getting cold you start seeing a lot of fake shearlings around) and so it makes sense that people are trying to get into this market with their cheap options. This makes it hard to tell which are the good deals and which are not. When I was looking for a shearling, I ended up opting to buy a new one from a reputable seller instead because I wanted it bad enough, I could afford it and I didn't want to take risks.

 

[Rick Dalton]

The mentioned seller actually blocked me after I asked if the jacket was synthetic So yeah, watch out for him! https://www.ebay.pl/itm/16781323362...iec=|tkp:Bk9SR7TguIS5Zg&LH_ItemCondition=3000

 

[l0fielectronic]

I think what you might find is the seller with the 12 feedback ratings, and several negative ones, has stolen the images from the genuine seller (If you buy from the seller with the bad feedback you just get a similar looking jacket but not the one in the photos) this happens a lot.

The guy selling the jacket with photos of him wearing it as well looks completely genuine to me, he is selling several other jackets that all look genuine, one I own, and this does look a vintage item to me, jackets from Pakistan don't bother to add period correct labels and those labels do look 70/80s to me.

 

[l0fielectronic]

In fact someone has posted the below in the feedback of the leather_shaper80 seller showing that he received a different jacket to what was in the listings photos;

 

[Aloysius]

In fact someone has posted the below in the feedback of the leather_shaper80 seller showing that he received a different jacket to what was in the listings photos;

My translation:

Ordered

Irvin jacket in sheepskin
Sold on eBay by chardhrbari (Spain)

Received

Doubtful leather
Low quality fur
Slant pockets
Refusal of refund and return

 

[Edward]

Yes, one thing to be aware of on eBay and elsewhere are the shady traders.
These shysters use underhand tactics by ‘stealing’ images from legitimate sellers and businesses to use on their own sites and listings. Invariably, the item you end up receiving from them will be greatly inferior and look nothing like the one in the ‘stolen’ images.
Although not foolproof one way of not being taken for a ride is to look at the backgrounds in all the images of the items they are selling. More often than not these are all different.

As always it pays to have a healthy dose of scepticism when buying anything online which looks to be too good to be true.

I'm also beginning to see (moreso on Etsy than eBay, for whatever reason - maybe I'm just looking for different things there) the generative AI / chat gptrash poison seeping out into online auctions. When you've looked at a fair few genai pictures, you get to have a feel for detecting them. A lot of low-value goods sellers are now using genai in their ads. It would make med too wary - aside from all the other objections I have to plagiarism software, it doesn't give a me a lot of confidence that they have a quality product in stock to sell...

Of course, on the flipside there are also a lot of genuine sellers out there whose website photos make their stuff look lesser than it is. I can think of several motorcycle wear sellers whose jackets I'd looked at and thought "yuck" before seeing an actual one rather than their stock image...