With counterfeit luxury goods getting harder and harder to spot, China’s rich are paying thousands of dollars for  specialized courses on how to tell apart authentic luxury products from fakes.

China’s domestic luxury market is currently valued at approximately 4 trillion yuan ($617.7 billion) and that’s not even taking into account the second-hand luxury goods trade, but this boom has also given rise to sophisticated counterfeiting. Stories of bargain hunters being conned into parting with their money in exchange for hard-to-spot fake luxury products are very common on Chinese social media, so much so that there are now companies offering specialized courses on how to tell authentic luxury goods like Louis Vuitton or Chanel bags from counterfeit ones.

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Paying $840 for an original Hermes item seems like a great deal, but in this particular case we’re talking about a paperweight consisting of a rock and a calf leather strap. How do you even sell something like that?

Well, the French luxury brand found a way – they are marketing the “galet pebbles” (rocks) as unique, which means no one else in the world has the exact same item. But I’m pretty sure you can say the same thing about any river stone. The odds of finding another with the exact same shape and pattern are probably astronomical, and you don’t have to pay anything for that. Sure, it doesn’t come with a fancy calf leather strap, but still…

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