As I mentioned they were NOT counterfeits. Motorola are fiercely brand protected but the factories that build the radios often have huge surpluses of parts when production finishes. This I think started with the P60 radios from the 80s - crystal controlled and quite nice - but they too resurfaced 5 years after.
I've been offered today some Digital Motorolas - that were new I think in 2013 DM2600. If a firm were going to counterfeit a radio, then sales wise, you'd do it to a current model. Somewhere the piles of completed PCBs have been collected, finished and missing parts - typically the plastic cases, have been produced, using the original moulds. This is perfectly normal and Motorola and Icom have had this happen for years, and they cannot engage the usual counterfeiting laws, which do work in China, because they are just built from available spares. Icom often have a different plastic 'feel'. It feels harder and sometimes is even a slightly different colour - not jet black. The Battery packs have always been sold as spares from china of course. Sometimes, they have even recovered the stocks of original cardboard. What is different? Labels mainly. The moulded areas where internal stickers are attached might still be blank, same on the battery packs. Often the give away is the desk chargers for portables - these usually are OEM type products with just the charging tray fitted with the correct slots and contacts, but a generic housing - not the original Motorola or Icom. I guess the chargers just got scrapped or sold as spares nearer the original date.
I get offered these radios virtually every month - oddly, never of models less than 5 years old. 7-10 is about right. The GP68 and the ham version were the first I think to be imported en masse and sold. Motorola of course considered them obsolete, but there were Motorola, just new old ones.The killer I found when I bought a few old Motorolas was the software was XP, not even Vista, so I could not even program them. Another common radio still available like this is the Kenwood 281/481, which are excellent radios, but very elderly now. These aren't even that cheap. The boxes say made in Japan, but clearly the majority of the radio was actually Chinese origin. Icom still do this with their marine radios - they have them produced for them in China, then in Japan, they add the splash screen and program them - the boxes say made in Japan.
There are very few real counterfeit radios. One of my suppliers tells me that Baofeng cheapies that keep appearing all over the place are now also made from surplus parts. A strange world now.
