Comparison of the spectrum of SN 2003lw taken on Dec 20, 2003, ∼15 days (rest frame) after the burst and ∼3 days before the SN maximum in the R_c band (in light gray, Malesani et al. 2004) with the spectrum of SN 2012eb taken between Aug 1 and 2, 2012, 13.2 days after the burst (black line; shifted to the rest frames). The spectrum of SN 2003lw was taken from the Open Supernova Catalog data base (Guillochon et al. 2017). According to Mazzali et al. (2006), this implies that on Dec 20 the expansion velocity was 17 000 ± 1000 km s⁻¹. The SN 2012eb spectrum shows a substantially higher blueshift. Both spectra are smoothed with a boxcar filter of 250 Å width. Flux densities are arbitrarily scaled.