[Charlotte]

At Amazon, hit the "22 used + new" link

[Rob Barron]

Could be genuine but not sure I would trust it at that price Charlotte. They are being sold at £39.95 from reliable companies so I am not saying this couldn't be legitimae but it seems a bit strange to sell this card at £24.99. Having said that, several of us got entirely legitimate Extreme IIIs for £17.99 so it could be absolutely fine.

I guess I am just urging caution but if someone gets one at this price then good on you. I am not going to for one simple reason: I have 4 of the 4Gb Extreme IIIs already and as manic as I am with that shutter release, even I would struggle to fill all 4 cards in a weekend

Amazing to think these cards were £200 just a year or less ago. I remember paying £120 for a compact flash card. It was a bargain.... with 10Mbs of space! (No, that isn't a typo, it really was 10Mbs, not GBs!)

How the world is changing

Cheers,
Rob

[Charlotte]

Rob, I recommended them because I bought two of these myself - both received extremely quickly + exactly as described, so trust me when I say it is genuine

[dreamland101]

I think he must have sold them all, I have just checked and the lowest price I can see them for is £34.99. (I should have been a bit quicker!)

[Charlotte]

Hard luck dreamland, I didn't think they'd last long, at that price

BTW Welcome to Pixalo

[danpen]

I picked up a cheap Sandisk Extreme from an Amazon seller a year or so ago, seemed OK 'til I bought another, then I realised I'd been done as the first looked slightly different so I tested them, first was a bit slower so I checked the serial numbers - fake.

It still works fine, just slower - it was no more expensive than the equivalent slower card at the time but it was not what I believed I was paying for. Apparently they're a lot smarter with the serial numbers now so how you spot a fake without doing comparitive read/write tests I don't know.

cheers

Dan

[WOODY]

GOOD TO SEE YOU BACK DAN

[Charlotte]

These were definitely genuine + in sealed Extreme IV packaging

I have been 'taken' in the past on Ebay, but that was in the first few days of joining, and I wanted the product (Tomtom software) too desperately - got ripped off twice in trying to acquire it Got my money back in both cases, and have been more vigilant since then

[Rob Barron]

Not doubting you in any way Charlotte, but how do you know they are genuine? I have read through all the websites that tell you what to look for and even they are saying it is getting harder and harder to spot the fakes as the cheats are wise to every trick in the book. All the fakes come in fully packaged and sealed boxes with the same leaflets, soft pouch and things so the only way to truly know would be to have the necessary equipment to do a genuine test of read write speeds. The problem is, all these cards are pretty fast these days, even the 'slow' ones and manually timing things is hard to see a difference.

One thing seems pretty certain from all the sites I have read recently, you pretty much cannot tell by looking at them. After all, the tricksters read websites as well so they know what serial numbers to put on them etc.

Let me make it clear I sincerely hope that the ones you and others have bought are genuine, I really do. I would just like someone to tell me exactly how I can tell nowadays. Frankly it baffles me why a trickster would go to the huge effort of buying cards and then doctoring them to look like the expensive ones when the expensive ones are now so relatively cheap anyway. They surely can't make much money on them. The only way they'd make a decent amount of money is if they nicked them but then I guess they would be genuine anyway LOL.

Oh well, just my thoughts. Maybe I'm getting too cynical in my old age <g>

Cheers,
Rob

[VinnyP]

Charlotte,
Which seller was it you got these from? Since some also seem to have the 8GB for silly money which I would snap up. Did it come in a black and gold box as well as the blister pack and did it have the recovery software and a key ring pouch that holds 2 cards?

[Charlotte]

Originally Posted by VinnyP

Charlotte,
Which seller was it you got these from?

Maralex International.

(They aren't showing as having any of these at the moment, but there are two other sellers with them at +/- £25 each.)

Originally Posted by VinnyP

Since some also seem to have the 8GB for silly money which I would snap up.

Ooh, I might have a look at those ... the 4GB ones fill up quite quickly when shooting RAW with a 12MP camera!

Originally Posted by VinnyP

Did it come in a black and gold box as well as the blister pack and did it have the recovery software and a key ring pouch that holds 2 cards?

Yes to all

[Charlotte]

Rob,

I googled Maralex International, and found their Ebay shop, their own websites (two different ones that I saw [an eu one and a uk one], and found them on a trade-related website ... all this in addition to their Amazon shop. They appear not to be a small-time dealer with time on their hands to mess about faking CF cards

Yes, I think you're being too cynical Really, if you can't tell the difference between the real cards + the fake ones without using specialised equipment, then the difference is negligible anyway, so why worry if they're "fake" when they cost half the price of "real" ones but still do the same job, to all intents + purposes

EDIT: If these 'crooks' are using real packaging but fake CF cards, what are they doing with all the real cards that came in the packaging that they are using for the fake ones

[AQ]

Charlotte. Going back to the start of this thread do you actually need the speed of the Extreme IV cards. It may be that the maximum write speed of your camera is not up to the rate of the IVs and Extreme III will do the same job for you. It may be worth checking as that could save some money. I have no idea what the maximum write speed of the various cameras are though.