Museum of Counterfeiting
There’s the Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Louvre – but the Museum of Counterfeiting? There actually is such a place – Musée da la Contrefaçon in Paris (France not Texas). In fact, the museum has been around since 1951, initially started to help educate the general public about the scope and costs of the problem. In France alone, counterfeiting is responsible for the loss of about 38,000 jobs and €6 billion annually.
All the museum’s counterfeit holdings are genuine knock-offs (genuine fake stuff!). Exhibits range from faux foodstuffs to tools, toys to car parts, designer fashion and most alarming – health and beauty products including fake prescription drugs. When the museum was founded, 90% of counterfeits were designer products. Today, designer counterfeits accounts for only about 5% of the problem.
The oldest exhibit in the museum dates from the first century B.C. and is French. At the time, it seems, Greek and Roman wines were considered the best, a 28-liter amphora having the same market value as one Gallic slave. The museum has an amphora whose stopper is a crude imitation of the mark of Marcus Cassius Caius and which, instead of a fine Phalerian, presumably contained an inferior growth from the midi of Gaul.
Counterfeiting is timeless. But hopefully, with the help of Signature DNA, there will be no need to add a post-modern counterfeiting wing to the Musée da la Contrefaçon.
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