I’ve decided that whenever I get an “Ask Seller a Question” that I think might be helpful to others- I’ll stick it on my blog. So here is another good one for the authentic pre-owned Louis Vuitton Looping MM that we have listed on eBay right now. Here’s the question:

“Dear Fashionphile,

I’m having a very difficult time….two seemingly respected ebay sellers (one being you) are selling the same bag. One has a continuous piece of monogram canvas on the bottom of the bag, so that one side has upside down LV’s. The other seller’s bag has a seam on the bottom, with both sides having upright LV’s. Both of you are guaranteeing authenticity. Please help me sort this out.”

Here is the base of the Louis Vuitton Looping MM she is talking about:

and here is the base of a different authentic pre-owned Louis Vuitton Looping MM that we have listed on our website:

Notice that the Looping MM in our eBay listing has no seam on the bottom, while the Looping MM on our website does.

When Louis Vuitton introduced the Looping in 1999, there was a seam on the bottom- like the second picture above. A lot of people like the seam, because this makes the LV monogram appear upright on each side of the bag.

Probably because it’s less labor intensive, and doesn’t effect the function of the bag- Louis Vuitton changed from the seam on the bottom to the unseamed base like the one in the top picture sometime in 2001.  (So that one side of the bag now has “upside-down” LVs.)

You’ll notice that the date code of the un-seamed bag that the woman asked about on eBay ends in “3″ (2003).

This is the date code of the bag with a seam:

The seamed bag ends with a “1″ (2001).

A Louis Vuitton Looping bag with a seam will have a date code ending in a 1, 0, or 9 (2001, 2000, or 1999).

In early 2001, the French made (Made in France) Looping bags actually started coming with the one piece base. For whatever reason, the San Dimas USA factory was a little slower to switch to the new one piece bottom, so a Made in USA Looping won’t have the one piece until 2002).

Basically, this means that a bag with a 2001 date code could have a seam or not, so definitely check other features for authentication. But the general rule is that a newer (than 2001) bag will have no seam, an older bag will have a seam.

***  The same rules apply with the Mini Looping and the Looping GM (Large).

Hope this was helpful!

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Tags: changes, Looping MM, Louis Vuitton, seam, You asked

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 21st, 2008 at 2:37 pm and is filed under You asked. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.