Quality Sporrans for less money

[Miller6582]

When looking on eBay for sporrans, what do you look for? How do you know you are looking at a quality sporran instead of something cheaply made?

I find that most of the sporrans listed on eBay (UK) are cheaply made imports, the sellers all have names like House/Heritage of Scotland and are usually based in London. Filtering the search results to show only preowned/used sporrans will screen out most of the cheap imports, I did this on ebay.com today and filtering the 600 sporran results left me with just 30 to look through.

A good indication you are looking at a quality vintage sporran is the gold oval 'made in Scotland stamp', I have an example a few posts back in this thread (not all makers stamped made in Scotland, my WE Scott day sporran came with a sticker).

If you are looking at new sporrans with a buy it now price, the price will be an indicator too, you're unlikely to find a good quality new sporran for £50/$50.

A number of sporran cantle designs have been copied from Scottish made sporrans, you can usually see that the finish on the cantle is less defined and a rougher finish.

I would suggest looking through this thread and looking at OC Richard's many fine catalogue pages and photos of the actual sporrans. You'll soon develop an eye and be able to separate the gems from the lemons.