I ordered a pipe tool through Amazon.com from a seller named Bubble Star, and it arrived today from P-Rider, 5902 Sovereign Dr., Ste. B-2, Houston, Texas 77036. When I read on it "MADE IN CZECH REPUBLIC," I was elated, having something that isn't made in China! But then with closer observation through a magnifying glass, I saw that it actually says, "MADE IN CZEOM REPUBLIC." Czeom? Never heard of it. So I googled it. Can't find it. Nowhere online does it say where Czeom is. Suddenly I had on my hands a mysterious, alien, pipe tool.
Since I love a mystery, I search until solving it. My pipe tool is a forgery! Compare the two pictures below. I'm not sure whether or not these two pipe tools differ in color or if it's an image distortion; mine is silver in color. At the top is pictured the pipe tool actually made in the Czech Republic, also sold through Amazon.com but from the Nordic Art Store. The bottom picture is an enlargement of my pipe tool. It's hard to make the image clear enough, but mine really says, "MADE IN CZEOM REPUBLIC."
I don't know who committed the forgery but I would suspect the Chinese because of their worldwide market and because they're less familiar with English letters. What happened is that (most likely) the Chinese tried to imitate the pipe tool and misread "CZECH" as "CZEOM." Notice that not only is the font different, but the spacing between the letters and lines is different.
I should return my pipe tool for the forgery it is, but since it works just as well (so far) and is now a conversation piece, I plan to keep it. I distrust China, and now each time I smoke my Missouri Meerschaum cob pipe I'll be reminded why. I'll keep looking for Czeom, though. It might be a great place to vacation.
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For the complete contents of the Butter Rum Cartoon, click here.
Hey, thanks a lot for this post!
ReplyDeleteI've just received the tool from Aliexpress, and as I am Czech, I also had misread that as "CZECH REPUBLIC" at the first try ... as it is obvious nonsense, why would Chinese sell anything made elsewhere, I took a closer look - and Goog... ahem, DuckDuckGo has found your article as the first result.
So it is a copy of a tool made in my country - which is pretty sad. They sell the original here for about the same price (15 CZK = ~$0.71 at current rates, search for "dusátko", from China it was $0.73), however the postage is insane, it ranges from ~$4 to ~$7; you don't want to pay ten times the item cost for shipping, so you just whisper a prayer to mother Earth to forgive you for the ecology damage caused by the item travelling over half of the globe, and order from China with free shiping. :-/
If I knew the ones sold here are not Chinese like 90% of other stuff sold in our stores but local production, I would try to find some 'offline' shop nearby to get it without postage fees to support local workers and save the Earth (heh, less than a dollar and a few grams on an airplane doesn't make a difference, but for the principle ...)
Just received this in the mail, then spent 10 minutes going back in forth with my daughter telling her...no, it isn't czeom it's czech, and it's pronounced check. Then I finally put on my glasses while she had grabbed her phone to google czeom.... lol very cool seeing we are not the only ones having this experience.. glad we all have a nice conversation piece.
ReplyDeleteHaha have the same pipe from aliexpress) Thanks for article.
ReplyDeleteI recieved two pipe tools in the mail without buying them, marked from Wish.com and I just realized it says Cheom. Googling led me to this post, so thank you for this.
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