[Joe]

Here we see three CompactFlash Sandisk Extreme III cards....or do we?

The 2gb one came from 7dayshop.com (bought for approx £30)
The 4gb one came from Jessops (think this was near £65-70)
The 16gb one came from a Chinese ebay seller. (won for less than £25 !!!)

No prizes for guessing, even before looking closely at the pics, that the 16gb one is indeed the counterfeit one! Admittedly, it is a very good copy, so good that these photos dont show too much difference. However, the plastic texture of the card is wrong, note the difference in reflectivity of the word 'extreme'. The third photo shows the 16gb card on the right...the label is not pure white, more a cream colour. The text is also quite pale, not as black as all the others
The 16gb card Has edge serial markings as 'BH080802516B made in China'. A little investigation work reveals this serial can be traced back to the Shenzhen factory in China. The chip is their own 'TOPXCARD' branded hitachi copy (dam it....not even a Texas Instruments/Sandisk copy!)
There have been reports that this serial number is being used on cards ranging from 512mb all the way upto 32gb. Sandisk, Kingston and Lexar are the brands labels used.
Upon checking the actual capacity of this 16gb card, it is found to be 15gb (even after formatting), and write speed is about the same as a genuine UltraII card.
Reports suggest up to 90% of cards sold on ebay is counterfeit. I got mine for a silly low price, so was virtually expecting a counterfeit through the post.

Interestingly, the 2gb and 4gb cards also have variations.
I can take it the 4gb is genuine, bought as Jessops clearance stock, and also checks out with the same type Andy gave me with the D2h (and I know he buys from the high street too). Weirdly one 4gb card has the label on upside down, the other (I used to take these pics) doesn't.
The 2gb card from 7dayshop.com displays 'made in china'. However, the serial checks out and the packaging checks out with Sandisk. Capacity and write speed match the 4gb cards.
All I can find is that Sandisk do actually have multiple facilities dotted around the world manufacturing genuine products, which might go to explain why some genuine cards are now displaying 'made in china' on the edge markings. Sandisk themselves seem very sketchy about this infomation though..
What is most worrying is how good the copies are now. All comparisions I've found tell the reader how such things as fonts, print quality, trademark symbols, and materials used are radically different. Those differences aren't quite so marked as one might think.


Have a close look at your memory cards.
take a picture, say where you got it from. Hopefully, we can build up more data on memory cards.
Interested on other peoples first hand findings?