If you spend any time at record shows or in record shops—anyplace you can find used physical products—you may stumble across some interesting counterfeit records.
A counterfeit release looks exactly like the real thing but was manufactured illegally by someone who is not the artist’s record label. This sort of piracy has been capped at the knees by the spread of streaming services around the planet, which has affected the sales of all physical products, including illegal stuff.
There are high-quality counterfeit CDs and LPs still to be found, many of which come from China and Russia.
But this is hardly a new thing. Even back in the 60s and 70s, there was something some record collectors call “mafia records.” These looked almost exactly like what you could buy in the store but were clever counterfeits. This was how some members of the mob earned.
Today, record collectors must beware of these fakes because they’re obviously not worth as much as the real thing.
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