Yes, they're counterfeit . . . .

Obligatory Statement of Morality:

Counterfeiting con badges is very, very, very Naughty. No one should ever counterfeit a con badge for any reason, not even in the privacy of your own home. If you counterfeit a con badge, you are Stealing Food from the Mouths of the Poor Starving Con Committee. If you counterfeit a con badge, you will Go To Hell, Go Directly to Hell, Do Not Pass Purgatory, Do Not Collect 200 Indulgences, Just Suffer Eternal Damnation. If you counterfeit a con badge, You Will Be Asked To Leave The Con. And not nicely, either. You will be made to Write "I Will Not Counterfeit Con Badges" A Thousand Times On The Blackboard.

If you're caught.

Thomas saw his first counterfeit con badge at a Unicon in the mid-1980s. The thing that caught his eye (and his sense of humor) is that it wasn't even a good counterfeit. Instead of an intricate drawing, it had a few squiggly lines; instead of dates other small print, it had some scribbles; and best of all, it spelled the name of the con "Eunuch-Con."

Thomas was tickled. And a tickled Thomas is a dangerous Thomas. So he started making "alternate" con badges. These weren't to escape paing for a membership . . . in many cases, Thomas carried a perfectly legal badge elsewhere on his person. No, he made them for fun. Some were good, some were fun, some were outrageous.

And the funny thing . . . all of them passed inspection (even the ones Thomas expected would be caught). None of Thomas' alternate badges have ever been challenged (except, possibly, for a knowing wink from a ConFrancisco gopher) -- not even when he's stood talking with the Con Chair.

Security at cons can't be that bad. We prefer to believe that fans appreciate (and reward) the ingenuity and skill that goes into Thomas' creations.

Here's a gallery of some of his more notable efforts: