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You might be a true Canucks fan, but is your jersey the real thing?

Forget the fake Chanel handbags and the knock-off Gucci sunglasses, the hottest counterfeit items around Vancouver this spring could be Canucks jerseys.

Forget the fake Chanel handbags and the knock-off Gucci sunglasses, the hottest counterfeit items around Vancouver this spring could be Canucks jerseys.

Authentic jerseys are increasingly popular with the beloved team heading into the first round of the playoffs and they are pricey, often about $200 for one with a popular player's name and number on the back.

A quick Internet search, however, finds a China-based company that offers to ship to your home a "wholesale cheap Canucks jerseys" for as little as $25. Such online pitches began a few years ago and are targeting all National Hockey League teams, but the playoff-bound franchises are often the most popular.

"Typically the teams that are successful, including the Vancouver Canucks, are the ones we see the most counterfeiters for," Tom Prochnow, the NHL's vice-president of legal and business affairs, said in an interview.

The big-ticket jerseys are the most popular fakes, followed by T-shirts and baseball caps, and they all eat into the profits of legitimate retailers and the hockey teams.

How big is the problem?

That's impossible to say, since officials only know how many knock-offs are seized, not how many have been sold.

During the 2011 playoffs, some 3,500 phoney hockey goods were confiscated, with an estimated value of $500,000, Prochnow said.

So far in the 2011-12 hockey season, more than 3,000 counterfeit NHL items worth $675,000 have been rounded up in Canada and the United States.

"That's up to now and our playoffs are the busiest time of the year for seizing counterfeits," Prochnow said.

"We expect comparable or more [seizures during the playoffs] this year."

Larry Weiss has owned the Collectors Den sports store in Richmond's Lansdowne Centre for 22 years and has a counterfeit jersey in his shop so people can see the difference between it and the real thing: The colours are slightly off, the stitching can be shoddy, players' names have been misspelled and the numbers have even been wrong.

"I can spot them right away, although they are getting better," Weiss said.

"The Canucks were on TV a few weeks ago, and they showed the opposing coach and right behind him was someone wearing a counterfeit jersey."

Weiss's store sold out of Canucks jerseys during last year's final against Boston, and it looks like this year's playoff sales will be just as brisk.

"I've been very busy this week," he said.

"And in the second round [of the playoffs] it will ramp up more."

There are legitimate online sellers of authentic NHL gear, and one website even proclaims: "Official NHL, NOT Chinese fakes."

Prochnow said the poorquality knock-offs mostly originate from factories in China, so it is difficult for American and Canadian authorities to crack down on the businesses. Domain names for the companies' websites have been disallowed, but it is easy for them to set up a new online shop, he added.

All official National Hockey League merchandise has tags with holograms on them, and Prochnow recommends buying from stores or websites you trust.

Be wary, he says, of folks selling jerseys out of backpacks at the street corner or on folding tables at the flea market or for too-good-to-be-true prices online.

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