luckily since you're going to look at it locally, you can tell right away the difference between a 50 dollar wheel off wish, or a 500 dollar legit one. The feeling of the leather, the tightness of the stitching, how well the seams are put together, they all add up to a quality piece. The knockoffs, no matter how good they try and make them, lack this attention to detail.
Example I found.
This wheel is off Wish. 50.00 bucks. Notice how shitty that seam looks on that bottom spoke? It isn't very well lined up, and it looks like it was just hot glued into place. The stars are composed of less stitch work, and uses thicker thread, meaning they can produce them faster using less material. The edges on the holes on the spokes don't look like they've been broken (probably pretty sharp edges still from the original machining), and the spoke material looks like it could be a little thicker.
This wheel is off of vertex's website. Cleaner seam, no overhang of material, won't come apart in a few months. stars are stitched using more dense stitching and with finer thread, and the spokes machine work looks much cleaner.
