The fakes are better than ever, would you know the difference?

With the troubled economy, many people are dropping off their designer handbags to resale shops, or turning to Ebay to sell them online.

And if you’re buying, it’s an opportunity to snag great deals on luxury products. But would you know the difference between the authentic bag and the fake? Before you buy, we have some new techniques to authenticate bags.

Cheryl Jackson says, “Every woman wants a good bag, and a good man, one of them you can buy .” She was looking for a designer deal, but she got burned. She says, “I bought a bag off of Ebay and they said it was real and when I took it to the Louis Vitton store they told me it was fake!”

I went shopping with her, then asked an Easy Sale expert to tell us if what we shopped for was real or fake.

For a Louis Vuitton bag, the expert says “Immediately what I do is the feel of the bag, and this one feels like vinyl.” She was right, the bag was fake. David Goldstein of Easy Sale says, “Notice how the real one has solid brass the corners are all machined, it feels heavy. It’s very well made. The fake has sharp corners, you can see the finish is rubbing off a little bit. ” You can also tell by the lining. The fake is made of suede, while the real multicolor Louis Vuitton has a raspberry colored lining. These would normally cost anywhere from $5000 to $6500.

And with classic Louis Vuitton, it’s even harder to tell the authentic bags from the fake ones. David says, “They really protect that monogram, so the authentic one is centered, the LV runs down the middle, the fake has the LVs off to the sides. You also won’t see them cut through their monogram. The fake bag, they cut through the LV.”

And the real one will always have a small date code. You can look up the number to determine if it’s a style that’s manufactured. The same goes for most luxury brands, including Coach. David says of a Coach bag, “It will have embossed on it a serial number and then a 4 digit model number.” Uneven stitching is a dead giveaway.

But regardless of where you’re shopping, know what your return options are before you buy. Cheryl says, “I would ask the store, what is their return policy if I purchase this bag and find out it’s not real.” And David says, “”I would look at the seller’s feedback, you can look back at their 90 days of transactions.”

And now you know how to shop like a designer expert, happy hunting!