Although I’d recommend eBay to anyone looking for a good deal on golf clubs, you have to be extrememly careful when purchasing golf clubs here. I’d say good percentage of clubs are fakes, espiecially with popular brands like Ping, Callaway, or Taylor Made. Heres a few hints on what to look for when you try to figure out who might be selling a fake.

First of all do some research on the club, for example if you want a Ping G5 driver you should know what lofts they come in. That way if you see a 9.5 or 10 degree Ping G5 (not made by ping) driver for sell you’ll know its probably a fake. The seller wont even have a picture of the club that lists it with that loft.

Another trick counterfeiters try to pull is that you impress you with a perfect or close to perfect feedback score. If you look closer though the feedback score will usually show less than 100 feedbacks. The feedbacks are primarily, if not all, from sellers, not buyers. If they do have feedback from buyers its usually from transactions made more than 6 months ago and you are not even able to see what it is they sold.

Most of the time the item will be sold as a Buy It Now with a very

reasonable price and an short deadline, enticing the buyer to try to

buy it before someone else snatches up the good deal. The seller will usually be selling a large amount of clubs in auctions set to expire around the same

time so that they can dump their inventory before any bad feedback is

given.

Usually the counterfeiter will list the club as new and show the same stock picture for all their clubs. The picture is copied from another website, and is not an actual picture taken of the club. Many time the picture wont even match the discription, for example the mislabled lofts or a picture of a left handed club with a description of a right handed club. Usually the product description is generic, and copied from another website too.

I would attempt to make most purchases from someone with an extremely high feedback store (1k or higher) and preferably from a seller with their own eBay golf store. Many sellers offer money back guarantees if the club is returned within a week. This allows you the chance to have a golf pro or shop owner take a closer look at the club for authenticity. Make sure the seller provides many up close pictures of the club at various angles (face, crown, head), and provides a detailed description of the condition of the club, shaft type, grip type, etc. Finally dont be afraid to ask the seller any questions you might have. If anything about the item makes you feel suspicious just pass. The great thing about eBay is theres usually plenty of people selling the same club. Good Luck