Back in ’18, things were a little…wilder, I guess. Finding reliable sources was like searching for a needle in a haystack, only the haystack was made of shady websites and broken English. You had to be *real* careful.
One thing I remember, and this is just me thinking out loud, is that a lot of people were talking about buying directly from, well, *certain* sites in China. The whole “importing replicas” thing was definitely a buzzword. The idea being that you could cut out the middleman and get stuff cheaper. Now, I’m not saying I did this myself (*cough cough*), but… hypothetically speaking, if one *were* to go down that rabbit hole, you had to do your research. Like, seriously.
There were a few websites that would, like, *claim* to have the “best quality” replicas. And look, sometimes they were right, sometimes they weren’t. It was a gamble. Sites that had like, tons of five-star reviews were obviously a good starting point, but you always had that nagging feeling that some of those reviews were, you know, “encouraged.”
And then you had the whole payment situation. Credit cards were kinda risky, so stuff like Cashapp, Apple Cash (if they even accepted it back then, I honestly can’t remember), or even PayPal were sometimes the go-to. It felt… sketch, but hey, that was part of the fun, right? (…Right?)
Oh! And don’t even get me started on the whole “replica bags” scene. That was a whole *other* level of dedication. People were trading recommendations for specific dealers like they were top-secret intel. It was intense! I knew people who practically lived on forums, hunting down the best sources. The good news, if you managed to find a decent dealer, the quality could be surprisingly good. The bad news? You probably aged five years from the stress of it all.
