Though Amazon is littered with fake products, and I respect your caution, I feel confident that these are genuine.
They’re sold by Amazon, not another vendor, and the picture above was taken by me of one of the two that I purchased myself. I’m also not the only person to have noticed the weirdly low price.
Before I was convinced of the authenticity of the bobbins, I'd be contacting Tiemco in both the US and Japan. sending them the link and asking if there is chance they are counterfeit...
Amazon is a $#!+show of fake goods regardless if they, a subsidiary or a partner is the seller...
Back when I started tying there weren't many choices so I went with Materelli plain metal tube bobbins and have stuck with them ever since. I also own a couple Rite ceramic bobbins that I reserve for GSP because it is tougher on plain metal tube bobbins.
As far as shape goes, my preference is basic spring arms, small, flat spool "buttons" so it's not too wide when loaded with a spool of thread and I like a long tube. The Materelli Long Tube bobbin fits that bill perfectly.
I know EXACTLY how to adjust them so my preferred thread spools fit just right and dispense with
minimal tension. I prefer minimal tension so I can load them with any denier thread without worrying about breakage or readjusting. If I want more tension, I just squeeze in on the arms of the bobbin. To fine tune the thread spool rotation and elminate squeeks, I wax the spool buttons with a little parafin.
Because they weren't that expensive back in the day and until discontinued, I have accumulated a lot of Materelli bobbins over the years because I like to keep multiple bobbins pre-loaded with spools of thread so I'm not swapping and re-threading all the time.
When I see what people get for a Materelli bobbin on eBay and elsewhere, I am confident in the knowledge I could sell my Materelli collection and buy as many of those other fancy bobbins as I want and still have some left over cash.
😉
