Hi,

I bought a sealed copy of Order of Ecclesia a few months back on ebay, French version.
Friend of mine finally lent me his copy to check and it does look sketchy. 
Fonts in some parts seem different and blurrier.
Am I looking at a fake copy?
 

Don't know, but they definitely look different to me

Some knowledgeable friend have replied to me too and they are 100% sure it doesn't have a nintendo black seal in it, it would have a "third party" seal (since it was konami who published it). Quoting what they said: "THERE ARE NO BLACK NINTENDO SEALS IN ANY PAL CASTLEVANIA".

Right now there are some sellers on ebay selling these copies. I'm warning all the collectors I know.

The box art on the sealed one is cut too small. It's definitely suspicious and I would say it's likely fake.

The sealed one looks just a tad off (like the bar code numbers on the back). Those numbers should be bigger like in the legit copy. Looks like a pretty good fake, or possibly a reprint? But I'm leaning more towards fake. You could always open it up and find out for sure lol

Doubt reprints have blurry logos... it's a fake alright. The problem is a sealed Ecclesia is worth over 100€ these days and these look really good. Looks like even boxed and sealed DS games are becoming a minefield too.

Its third party so at best would be a "recycle" seal (red round circle arrows).

The black nintendo seal seems very off as they were really late pal seals, moreso on 3ds...

For what its worth here is a VGA graded gopy of that game with the recycle seal...

https://www.ebay.com/itm/VGA-80-N...

Uh yeah. It sucks. I've been scammed too and that was like 5 years ago. Bought a fake CIB super robot taisen og saga game from this bookstore and thought it was legit until later. Most DS fakes are cart only and super easy to spot, but unfortunately these sealed ones are popping up more and are harder to spot at first (and obviously you don't want to open it up to see if it's a bootleg or reseal or whatever because then it's not sealed anymore).

One other observation,

PAL ds games came in clear thicker cases. Ive had a few of the black cases but those have both been Chinese bootlegs that wont work on a 3ds system.

Hey that's right! PAL DS games are in clear cases. So that means.... both of them are fake?! The graded one linked above is in a clear case.

Both are clear cases lol, the top one is legit 100% sure. They're not black, it's how the photo was taken.

This being said, you didn't used to see PAL ds bootlegs anywhere, but not anymore...

Unfortunately, people will fake any game where there's money to be made.

Although I don't collect sealed DS games, I do collect sealed Pal games and I think the game is resealed. As in a deliberate reseal to fool many unsuspecting buyers into forking out better than average sums of money.

General reasons:
- colour seems off compared to the real one
- the type of seal not consistent with a Konami (third party) DS game
- font size in the barcode not consistent with size to the real thing (I've also compared font size to a few DS games I have).

Yes, bootlegs and reseals are getting tougher by the day to distinguish, and occurring to more items where you don’t normally expect. It’s a universal problem for all collectors out there. 

I suspect in your particular game, it looks unfortunately a bootleg as well as a reseal. Let us know if you end up opening the game!

 

I will open it as soon as paypal refunds me the money, then show pictures here.  If paypal wants me to send it back to the seller I'm seriously thinking of not sending the game in a package, as I'm 100% sure he'll just seize the opportunity to scam another person. Had a response from him through paypal and I quote: 

"Hi, the game is a real one. I have already sold it several times and never got back. You say that the game is wrong when you have seen the inside of another game. But the game I sold you is sealed so you can not see the inside to compare unless you have it unsealed and in this case the game lost all that value. Maybe the game you saw is wrong and not the one I sold to you 4 months ago. I can not refund you and recover a collectible game that must have been open or damaged all this time. As noted on ebay I accepted returns up to 14 days which is the legal period. Thank you for your understanding."

Which seemed to me very cynical from him (didn't even want to know why I said it was fake, but ofc he knew), thinking he had the ebay system beat, but BAM raised the claim to a dispute for him to learn a valuable lesson. Kinda feel bad about everyone else he scammed, he sold around 8-10 copies for like 70$/ around 68€, which was surely a 500-600€ profit for him. Then if those people decide to sell it years from now they'll probably lose a few hundred with a fake/bootleg claim. 
 

barcode with different font size is common with reprints
and so is slightly different colour printing and edge cutting of the paper
i see no proof this is fake just by looking at those photos

both variants rather common anyway

bigger font
https://www.ebay.fr/itm/CASTLEVAN...

smaller font
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Castleva...

The trick is to take all the factors to then form an opinion. Do Konami DS games ever come as Nintendo-logo tear strips?

Also, the communication by the seller seems to be misleading. As a genuine seller of factory seals, he should have an invested interest in knowing if his products are reseals or not. His responses seem to be brushing it off as “nothing to see” or “nothing more I can do”, which unfortunately means, he is likely to sell more dodgy items in the future.

 

I've only seen clear-strip with recycle logo seals but we can't see anything on the OP photos. Take some decent close up photos of the nintendo-strip copy so we can help. front, back, sides and with the light shining on the seal.
Look for details such as scuffs on the case under the seal, but at this point i don't see why it couldn't be a variant with a nintendo strip seal.

i remember when everybody was sure the us version of this game only came sealed with a crappy thin shrinkwrap, then later proper y-fold sealed copies were found (and not for ooe only, but for dos and por too).

regarding nintendo strips, 3ds castlevania comes to mind, i found one here

https://www.ebay.com/itm/CASTLEVA...

not to mention dozens of nes/snes 3rd party games that have been found with nintendo red strip like terranigma, secret of mana etc

http://img.tradera.net/images/177...

http://www.sealedvideogames.net/2...

id be careful calling out the seller and claiming this is a fake game and/or fake seal based on OP's terrible pictures, and whatever the seller says or doesn't. way too little to say this right now, while plenty of nintendo seals on 3rd party games and plenty of cover variations with details updated have been found, down to barcode font size, i have a few myself.

Paypal just closed my dispute, didn't even bothered looking at it, so can't re-open the case. Lost me some money, basically.
I'm gonna open the game to show you guys what's actually inside later on so no one gets scammed again like this by mr Tony Rodrigues from France, if you ever buy something from France, avoid said man.

I understand your point of view. If there’s a chance it could be a reprint/variant-type factory sealed, then we can’t just assume it to be a resealed. 

The problem is though, we’re at an era where bootlegs and reseals are getting harder to spot, and if we ignore this issue then in the foreseeable future, more and more repro/reseal sellers would pop up and collectors would want out because nobody would know what’s real anymore!

With a handful of subtle clues, to me, it has more probability of it being fake rather than a real factory sealed. The seller not wanting to find out more the reasons the buyer is suspicious, is what’s making me think more so the seller is scamming. 

Looking forward to seeing the game being opened to confirm genuine or fake!

you'll be sorry if you open it up and it's a legit game, which it most likely is. send decent photos of the sealed copy so more people can help give you their opinion, don't remove the seal just yet...

Yeah, feeling really stupid after I opened the game. It's a fake one. Cartridge feels like cheap plastic, comes with USA warning labels even though it's a "EUR" version, doesn't come with any poster, manual looks cheap and with waving, colors are wrong and the "Mode d'emploi" that should be in there is "mode d'empLOL". Game doesn't work on a 2ds XL either. So whoever has a Castlevania Ecclesia out there with this nintendo seal, it's a fake.  No reprints come with blurry letterings. Photos attached. Some of you don't seem to understand someone out there is going great lenghts to copy stuff. Going to share this on every nintendo collector group out there on facebook.

Sorry to hear that ☹️