Legit Check - SIM 10.5 Driver

This was purchased second hand still in wrapper. Took it with me to compare to other SIM clubs and noticed a few slight differences. Not sure if this is due to different factory, or Real/Fake so need second opinions

Issues:

Color/Clarity of SN. The driver I have is very dark lettering on the SN, others I have compared it to are a very light color including the arrow. Color of the words DRAW/FADE seem to be a flatter off grayish color. Others seemed to be more metallic?Pitting inside of the slot for draw/fade circled in a few picturesRounded edge inside of the draw/fade slow on the draw side. Others were a straight lineBlack band on hosel seems thin compared to thickness of others

I'm no expert, but I'm 99% sure this is fake. All the items you identified do seem off and some of the other corners seem of poor quality. The biggest thing for me though is what appears to be a hole? in the dead center of the face. No way a legit TM drive has that.

I cannot confirm with a physical head but I have seen this hole in stock images.

Actually, most all TM drivers have that small hole. Its even in their promotional imagery.

As far as the legitimacy of the driver, the things you have highlighted look like fairly typical QC sorts of "issues". The fakes of the previous generation had painted on screws in the front which is normally the biggest giveaway. I don't know if the fakes have gotten better, but the Speed Injected models have been pretty easy to spot.

Other than the obvious tell of fake screws painted on the face, no one can agree on whether these sim heads are fake or if they are just poor QC from a new manufacturer. This seems to be happening a lot recently and it's scaring me away from buying one of these. Im gonna go with real on this one, just because of the hole in center of the face. Not 100% on this, but I think I saw that hole is there to test the CT of the club. I know my M5 has one and it's straight from a rep.

Might just be the angle of the photo, but yours looks like an actual hole and seems more square where as the normal TM driver has a round dimple.

This could be another optical illusion from the photograph, but at the heel of the weight slot, it looks to me like the slot is wavy. The notch you circled also seems very suspect. Looking at several images on 2nd swing, I also don't see any that have these tooling marks in the slot parallel to the face like yours do.

If the mark on your face is not an actual hole, then maybe it really is legit and you just got one with terrible QC. The speed ports on yours look legit and obviously aren't painted on like previous gen fakes so if this is not legit, I think the fakes have gotten way better. Have you called Taylormade to see if they can help determine? If you live in a large market, they probably have a fitter or rep in the area who could take a look at it for you.

Just bad QC. its real.

If you tap the crown does it sound like carbon fiber or metal? I doubt fakes are using a carbon fiber crown.

I wonder if QC has gone down due to COVID-19? Maybe factories have way smaller staffing levels and this kind of thing is slipping through more now?

Looked at some other real sims and the carbon fiber crown isn't even on straight on this one. That would annoy the hell out of me as it would always appear that the face is shut at address.