My friend who was on con staff used to work at staples and print out the badges before the con with a fake shiny sticker. No one ever noticed.

Con prices pretty ridiculous. Sure there's lots of cost to rent the place but still, I'm essentially paying them $35 a day to let me into a room to buy high priced anime goods.

I don't care much about video rooms, mainly the dealers. Walking around the con where the cosplayers hang out is free.

I've only done it once, for my friend's brother. He wasn't really interested in the con but we were spending the day there and couldn't leave him at alone so we faked a badge.

I do this every con. I only go for the dealers room for an hour and then look at cosplay for a little bit.

I did once, what we didn't realize that to get into the rave they blacklight it and the badges had this symbol that would only show up under a black light. Two of my friends were caught, i didn't go anywhere near the rave.

My friends did it for me once. I'm kind of a moralfag though so I still feel a little bad about it even years later. I mean the con is a money grubbing commercial piece of shit but I still feel bad.

I don't like doing it. Especially if I am travelling a fair distance for the con. I want everything to be legit and worry free.

I do this every year for a giant convention that will remain nameless. It costs about $40 for 120 badges to be made, front and back hard plastic. Sell each badge for $20 and you've got yourself a huge profit. Only one of my customers has ever been caught, but that was because she was acting like a freaking tweaker.

>>6570825
>show badge at door
>put badge under clothing
>head into rave
>?????
>profit

I've bought a real badge and let someone copy it once. They never got caught from what I heard but it seems they may last year? I'm not sure. I would use "boot leg" badges but I like collecting them.

>>6570865
Nah I think Anon means the shine a blacklight directly on the badge to check it before letting someone in, not just walking around looking at who's badges aren't glowing.

>>6570708 (OP)
Tips?

A friend bought a badge and copied it for a huge group of us. I didn't feel guilty about it at all because this con overprices admission like whoa ($60 for a shitty venue, shitty guests, and shitty dealer's hall full of bootlegs!?). We only stopped doing it because when someone who wasn't in on it the years prior found out (they were newly added to our circle), they started freaking out, name calling, and getting angry because of what we were doing. I still go to that con just to hang out with friends in the lobby since that doesn't require a badge. I pay for all my other con badges though.

>event has ink-stamp entry
>friend just came out of it to meet me
>...
>press my hand against his to copy the ink
>it works
why would anyone still use hand stamps?

>>6571134
Because the organizers are cheap and stupid?

>>6570728
>Con prices pretty ridiculous.

I wonder if that has anything to do with the paying attendees having to foot the bill for all the little thieving faggots in this thread?

It'd be a decent way to save money.
Too bad every FL con switched to wristbands for everything, but shit, friends of mine were making wristbands too.

>>6571148
HAHA you stuck up cunt. Hardly. Actually the overall reasons include:
1: Shitty economy. To stay aflot during bad travel times, hotels will charge less for rooms during the off season, however one of the biggest increase in prices is venue rentage. Cons are having to cover a higher cost thus, higher prices.

2: Many hotels are getting wise as to what is happening at conventions and unless a con is well managed, or generates an epic fuck tonne of money for the city (D*C, seriously, you practically have diplomatic immunity while your there) They will raise prices due to the tween attendies trashing the every loving shit out of their hotel.
3. Hotels are becoming increasingly more paranoid of Cons due to the mass amount of unsupervised children running around, and so will charge more for the con to be their since any child lost, or abused on their property is, well, a child lost and abused on their property.
4: Lost income. Yes, strangly this is a major factor as well, for an anime con to be hosted during a weekend, nothing else can be held their, weddings, business conferences. We've seen hotels try to do both in the past, and lose both sets of costumers because they did, (IE: a wedding or meeting is considered ruined because of cosplayers running around, or cosplayers being harrased by a shit ton of drunk business men leaving a conference.)
So if they take on a con, thats a wedding, or a conference that they can't host, so money lost, also including the downtime they have to have for cleanup (cause lets face it, cons aren't exactly the bastions of clean) and thats nearly two weeks that they have where they can't take in any other venue.

Seriously, take a fucking basic econ course. You'd be suprised to find most cons actually factor in loss of sales due to theft.

I've contemplated it for a certain con because it's full of dickweeds wasting the con money on 'business trips' to Japan.

You know. For research and all.

I've copied them many times, never been caught.

For the fancier badges, I just get someone I know to say they lost their badge, and give them like 10 bucks or buy them lunch. I've had someone "lose" their badge 4 times one year, because they were the only person who had a legit one, and that was at a pretty big con. Even though the rules said that they might charge for a replacement badge, I've never had a con actually charge. Just don't be stupid and have all five Jane Does walk in to the rave one after another, and you should have no problem.

It's even easier when registration things are all done on paper, you can usually get a badge with your actually name in that case.

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I've never copied a badge just because it seems time consuming, especially for a group. A lot of cons I go to have dealers/artists that I'm good friends with and I just ask them if I can borrow their badge during the day since they have to man their booth. The most recent con I went to I did that, but since my boyfriend tagged along I had to get him one too. No way in hell was I going to pay 60 bucks for a weekend pass to a shitty,greedy con who probably has the worst con staff in the world. I ended up stealing a badge that was left on the floor. Finders keepers, Losers weepers. If you are dumb enough to take off your badge and not secure it immediately, its fair game.
I regret nothing

Never have, but then again I tend to do alot of volunteer work at cons (helping host panels and whatnot) So I haven't paid to go to any small scale convention since...I wanna say around 2008?

Seriously, most places will give you two free tickets if you host 2 or more panels, why aren't more people doing this?

The badge itself is just a label. Security at cons looks at the plastic badge HOLDER, which usually contains some kind of obvious security feature to look for (hologram, reflective ink, colored border, etc). It can be forged too, but it's not as easy as just making a copy at kinkos.

Me and my friends usually don't copy badges. If someone doesn't have a badge and they want to go into an area that requires one, 2 people with badges will go into the area, 1 person will take off their badge inside, other person comes out with 2 badges to get the last person in.

LOL
Yes, it is notoriously easy.
Con staff aren't stupid and look for this.
While Kinkos does have a laminator on site, they are also overpriced.
Make sure to scan the image in high DPI and do BOTH sides and try to match the same height.

>ironically it's easier if the con uses color wrist bands.
>wear long sleeve shirt, find an ad for another convention/flyer in the same color, cut it, tape it to your wrist and bam.


Now that I'm older, don't do it anymore. Though most cons aren't really worth paying for.. the panels usually suck and the vendor room is never worth it.

>>6571472
wow you have no idea what you are talking about do you?

No, because the only Con near enough to me that I would bother copying a badge for is NYC ComiCon, and they know enough to check pretty well now, since it's so popular.

>>6571691

To follow up on my point, I had a fake badge once, went in, went out to get some food (I know, I was being stupid, but I had gotten it from a friend and didn't realize it was fake) went back in, got caught the second time, but the guy didn't care since there was less than an hour left and it was Sunday.

>>6571495
Sounds like Pacific Media Expo.

Never copied tickets, but MCM do wristbands, and most of my friends and I have small wrists, so we just swap around. That, or we cut and tape them.

I don't feel bad because if I couldn't get in for free, I wouldn't have gone in at all, so they haven't lost anything. I still paid my hotel bill, bought food in the convention centre and bought shit in the dealers' room.

I did this last year. Drove 5 hours to a local con with friends, only to find out they ran out of badges. They were just printed on regular paper, so we went to a staples and photocopied a bunch. We also sold some to people who couldn't get them.

The easier way is to borrow a friend's legit badge when they don't need it to get into something. Then you can peruse the Dealer's Hall or whatnot. They're not going to check what name is written on the badge if it's a con where they let you use nicknames on the front.

>>6571972
That would require your friend always being present to relay the badge to whenever you go in or out of a room. And would mean you could never be in the same event as your friend.

>>6571982
Of course.

I only mentioned borrowing a badge because some people buy badges and then don't really go to shit that requires them and spend most of their time hanging around in areas that don't require one to get in e.g. hotels with convention space where you can hang around the "hotel" and lobby areas. Some of my friends buy badges and go to maybe 2 panels and hit the dealers room a few times but that's it. There's no reason you cannot ask to borrow a badge from someone who does similar.

I didn't even realize that SDCC had a UV symbol imprinted on the badge til it was randomly checked once. To be honest they could probably save some cash just not printing the UV.because I've only had it checked once in ten years, it's only during the slow hours where it'd even be feasible, and you could always just go around to the back where the guys at the other entrances don't have a UV light nor give a fuck. Granted, you still need the badge holder, something I'd assume to be the hard part.

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>mfw you guys stopped replicating burando and started replicating badges

>>6571946

This. It's easier to get into expo these days than it ever was. We normally buy two weekend wristbands in the group and just swap them around occasionally. It's not like there's anything to actually do in the hall aside from buy shit.

>>6571518
That's exactly what I do to get into cons for free/for cheap. Just run late night shit that no one attends, get drunk as shit, and yell at people.

Anyone want to give any advice for copying badges?

>>6571148
I honestly don't think that badge-copying is a common thing, conventions are just getting more and more popular, so why not increase the price? The kid's parents are just going to pay for them anyway.

>>6571946
You know that none of those last things gives money to the convention, right?

>>6572440
Dealer's pay for their spot in the dealer's hall, buying their products will encourage them to return to the convention next year.

>>6572440
Well, buy shit in the dealer's hall does, paying my hotel bill makes the hotel (which is attatched to the convention centre) more friendly to the con, and buying food in the convention centre generates profit for the venue, making them more willing to host the con in the first place.

Also, me not going in at all also doesn't give money to the convention, and it's not like I cost them money just by breathing the air on the paying side of the gate instead of the free side.

>>6572419
seconding this

>>6571946
the only thing on that list that "benefits" the con is if you booked that room under a hotel room block that helps them meet their quota. You are hurting more than helping by taking up space and resources the con has to pay for without returning anything.

>>6571472
actually most cons are held on holiday weekends due to them being "undesirable" weekends to other business. That's one of the main reasons most cons won't bump their event to another weekend (good example was when AX lost out the Anaheim con center to the Shriners and decided to move to a different venue instead of take a different weekend. They would have had to charge way more.)

>>6571134

We did this at Otakon 06 to get me into an adult panel. I was a minor at the time.

>>6571972

Now you're screwed if said con decides you MUST HAVE YOUR REAL NAME ON THE BADGE, and are checking your ID to your badge to make sure it matches up. I won't say which con this was, but it happened to me. If you're really desperate, And broke, Scan it, made it a PDF and add the persons name to it.


I personally don't see anything wrong with making copies.. Most cons over charge for admission, And most people I've been to cons with only use their badges for Dealers hall and costume contest, Possibly the rave.

A con I use to frequent gave out (Or used to) a "Baka Badge) (IE, You lost your badge, cried to the registration people and Bam! new badge) but they have stopped doing that to my knowledge because of their shear amount of people claiming they lost a badge to get their friend in for free, or said friend paying them to get a lost badge.

I think it's a rip off to need a badge to get into the dealers room, In most cases atleast; Because most of the shit in the dealers hall is knock - off / bootleg shit anyways.

ITT: entitled asshats that think they should have a right to attend a con without paying for it. If you can't afford the badge stay home.

>>6572509
oh please, tell someone who cares.

>>6572505
I heard they were supposed to do this at SDCC but didn't actually hear any stories about it actually happening

>>6572505
>shear

I bet you spell shirring wrong too.

>>6572530
I cannot see that as being very efficient, especially with the size of the crowds there.

>>6572537
it's supposedly random checks, much like the UV light check. basically limited only to quiet periods. I got checked for UV at about 6pm and not ID check

>>6572505
>I think it's a rip off to need a badge to get into the dealers room, In most cases atleast; Because most of the shit in the dealers hall is knock - off / bootleg shit anyways.

Yeah. I wish more cons would do the discounted badges thing for dealer's hall/general shit areas only thing. I do remember one (can't remember which, AX maybe?) that opened up the dealer's hall for free after a certain time of day.

Single day admission is the most over-priced shit though. Maybe I'm just used to shitty local cons where you pay a reasonable fraction of the 3-day price for single day admissions (usually like $15-$25-$20 for Fri/Sat/Sun respectively) vs. all these California cons which seem to charge like 75% of the 3-day price for any one day ticket.

>>6572554
that's the point. they're trying to gouge you so you either pay for the 1 day or even better, pay for the 4 day you don't even need the rest of

>>6572554
Anime North does that --- Sunday afternoons are free, no badge required for the DR.

>>6571691
The first few years NYCC used to have paper badges XD would copy the shit out of those. Then they switched to plastic and we just do the switch.

but that place is way to over crowded now. I don't care about them losing money from fake badges BUT I do care about the place being over crowded because of it :/

somebody took hi res pics of the badges for a smaller con in my area. "LOOK WHAT CAME IN THE MAIL TODAY"

they posted them on the con's facebook wall

i printed one out and nobody had any idea

I staff cons and will admit to loaning my badge to friends coming to the con for only one day because I don't need it.

I wouldn't condone trying to get in for free for the whole weekend since the con really does need the money to continue functioning, but I can't bitch too much when I do what I do.

>>6572472
Paying your hotel bill isn't "doing the con a favour", it's your basic obligation for staying in a hotel room. They provide you with lodging, you pay. What the fuck kind of logic are you operating on?

Nope. I'm over 18, so if I can't afford a badge (but for some reason can afford gas and hotel...), I just apply to be staff. I've never been turned down. I get in free, sometimes get to meet guests one-on-one and always get free food. It's a total win-win.

>>6572674
This is the best thing I've read in this whole thread. Volunteering is the best way to attend without paying anything.

Nope, never have. I do remember remarking about how easy the simple paper badges were easy to photocopy and print (they were held in these plastic sleeves on a string, which you can buy from supply stores). I'm glad that cons are securing their badges better: stickers, hologram, rather than "paper" it's printed on sheets of plastic, extra people to check badges at several entrances, and just being extra observant when checking badges. Also, there's a few cons I've been to that uses the silicon bands , which you can wear around the wrist, with the con's name and year printed on them, making them far difficult to duplicate.

>being American
>being a poorfag who can't spent $60 every couple of weeks

only excuse you got is your laziness

I've never copied a badge, but I've borrowed friends' and I've faked losing it at the door to panels and such - it works every time, because I can fake crying very easily and am a decent actor, plus I have friends with badges that always play along.
I don't feel bad because I always run at least 2 panels, but that con has a shitty policy for panel reimbursement.

I copied badges twice.. and only once did a friend get caught. we were introducing them to the scene and didn't want to pay the $75 @ the door price.

we would go to office depot use nice paper and last year's plastic cases, and cut off previous years holos or w.e

friend got caught trying to get into the rave when they shined the flash light on it and realized something was wrong. Ironically he had gotten in 30 min prior by going through bag check, but had to leave and get something and then go back in...

thankfully he got off scott- free besides having to leave. he bought a pass the next year.

I've forged a couple Comic-Con badges before. Mostly because the prices for them are outrageous and they sell out within minutes.

The badge was super easy to make, but the badge holder was a bit more complicated. It has that solid border with lettering and the year in semi-transparent ink. I had to get creative with pant and crafts and spent a few hours getting things perfect.