that_watch_guy

duplicate post

Super-reps cost a lot because of a few factors. One of them is the fact that for some models, 1-2 people have a monopoly on them. For example, the Hublot models. They don't cost any more to make. One or two people have a tight monopoly on them, and therefor, no matter which dealer you order it from, that dealer has to go through the person who has the monopoly on the HBB and pay a higher price on it. The dealers know which models will be popular, and thus, they may invest extra money for exclusive rights to it for 3-4 months, and reap the ridiculous profits for that period of time before the factory get tired of just selling to one person, and begins selling them out the back door, causing the price to bottom out. Another reason for higher prices is that watches that have more attention to detail may require more time and effort to make. Not by much, but the factory knows they can sell it for more, so they do. Remember people paying $500 for the PAM187 when it first came out, just because they wanted it now now now? NOw that watch costs $299 or less. Dealers are simply taking advantage of buyer's impulsive nature. The watches may be high quality, but they are not worth an extra $300 surely, the dealers are only charging that because they know they can. The HBB is a great example of this. Despite the price, so many people buy it. That only encourages monopolies, cartels, whatever. By paying higher prices, you are re-enforcing what the dealers and factories already know; if they make a nice watch that is rare, and in demand, and exclusive, they can charge customers more for it and increase their average margin by 300-500%.

I just find it ironic that in countries such as the Netherlands, replica watches are seized by customs, because those governments do not approve of the product, and are under pressure from various groups and yet in the USA, the customs agents recognize them as non-authentic products, and then place an arbitrary tax on them, and collect a profit from it, while letting the illegal product reach it's recipient. If they were serious at all about trying to stop replicas, they would seize them instead of taxing them. Perhaps instead of seizing multi-kilo shipments of cocaine, they can tax those too Essentially they are saying "Hey, what you are doing is illegal, and we will let it go on as long as we can make some money from it too"

This is an old thread, but I am now 3 for 3 with San Francisco customs. Anything that goes out from Beijing always goes through San Francisco. In all three cases, my packages were delayed at least 4-7 days at San Francisco customs, and the postman showed up at my house asking for checks ranging from $90-$120 in taxes in order to release the package. The postal delivery worker told me that in his entire career he has never had to ask anyone for customs fees when delivering a package, let alone 3 times in a row. In a sense, if the USA government is acknowledging that these are replica watches, and they are then TAXING the replica watches, I would say that they are profiting from replica watches, instead of trying to stop them.

I bought an authentic Speedmaster from a reputable authentic watch dealer in Hong Kong, and had it shipped to me. Yes it came with box and papers, but so can a replica. Perhaps if you guys in the Netherlands don't want to lose your shipments, you should buy a box and papers from the dealer =)

There are Ebel replicas, the quality of which may be debatable, but they exist: http://www.villagephotos.com/pubbrowse.asp...911+CHRONOGRAPH =)

My question is how does some customs officer even know it's a replica? Do they have a serial number database? Do they have an authorized dealer on standby 24/7 to take apart each watch that arrives and verify it's authenticity? There are many legitimate watch stores and dealers in places like Hong Kong, are they just going to destroy every watch that comes into your country?

Watches I've owned with the Asian 7750 that had problems: PAM188 PAM253 (more than one) PAM212 (more than one) Bentley GT IWC Portuguese New Chronomat Evolution "Perfect 1:1" Breitling 44mm Avenger Titanium (older 7750) PAM092 Arktos PAM154 The most common problem is frozen subdials, second most common problem is frozen everything. Watches I have with the Asian 7750, that have worked perfectly for over 1 year: Bentley 49mm PAM196 Breitling 44mm SS Avenger Other watches with supposedly reliable movements that have died rather quick deaths: Panerai 063 GMT with ETA movement Breguet Classique 2824 ETA

If they make millions, they deserve every penny. It's a full time job for them. Even if they sell 5 per day, and make $15000 per month (before loses, fees etc), that is not factoring in all of the money they lose on shipping, lost watches, damaged watches, broken watches, malfunctioning watches, web hosting, extra bandwidth, fees to sell on this board, fees to sell in other places etc. If they sell 5 high end replicas per day, they probably incur at least $1800 per month in per-transaction bank fees, exchange rate fees etc. Then there are the customers, who, as mentioned above are often quick to file paypal or credit card dispute if the watches don't show up within 4 days, or tracking numbers don't show up within 24 hours, or emails aren't answered within two hours, or they find a minor cosmetic flaw, or they break the watch and no longer want to pay for it, or the watch doesn't meet their subjective idea of what a replica watch should be. All it takes is one pissing and moaning customer to complain to paypal using the word 'replica' and our dealers can lose their accounts for life, and thus lose profits and have to spend more money thinking of new ways to get around the system, which tightens up and cracks down more and more each day. The perceived 'risk' is not the dealers going to jail, because lets face it, they aren't going to fly to China or whereever to bother one guy who is selling things on the internet. The 'risk' is the dealers losing their ability to sell their product (web hosting, accepting payments etc), and thus losing their incomes. $1million per year is not enough.

The solution to this problem is incredibility simple: You need to host this site in a country where these types of laws are not enforced as much and it will be hard for anyone to contact and complain. China, Indonesia, Central America, Malaysia, the Caymans, wherever, just someplace else. Then, you should probably transfer this domain name into an anonymous trust, which you pay for using a money order or cash, something not traceable to you. edit edit edit: Realized my post contained too many good ideas about keeping this forum alive, will convey them to the mods directly to protect security.

"Is it the same with watches as with cars. Big cars compensate for s small p..... ?" I wouldn't know, though I'd venture to guess that it's probably the people with smaller wrists that have the small p____s.

Bored, so I took pictures of my Breguet, and PAM111h

The new Bentley gets more wrist time than the others. It's quite nice!

I bought that Bvlgari from another member some time ago. Unfortunately I recently gave it away to a friend =(

I do not claim to be a photographer, though I do claim to own a few watches =) Enjoy

True, prices are going up, but they never should have come down in the first place, because once dealers start to lower prices to compete with eachother or to draw more customers, the customers come to expect those low prices forever, and don't expect them to increase. When the factories raise their prices, the dealers must in turn raise theirs, and to customers it appears as though the dealers are becomming greedy, when in fact they are just trying to make the same amount of money they were making before, and sustain the same amount of loss. Fruthermore, as TTK said, there are lots of COSTS associated with selling these products. The paypal/money booker/merchant account 4.0+% is one, returns, exchanges, repairs, broken watches, lost watches, watches taken by customs, watches that customers didn't pick up from the post office in time... When a dealer ships a watch to a customer, and then customs takes it, the dealer either has to replace it or refund the customer. This money 100% comes out of the dealer's pocket. Any dealer selling 20+ watches per month is going to experience problems of one sort or another on a monthly basis, no matter how much they inspect their product or stand behind their service, they are losing a percentage of the money they make, guaranteed. I estimate that like other retail businesses on the internet, our watch dealers probably lose 20+% of their total profits due to misc. problems and that is not even including the outright fraud that they definitely encounter from buyers from time to time, where once again they lose out. So if buyers demand extremely low prices, which in turn lead to extremely poor margins for the dealer (who doesn't control the prices demanded by the factory), and losses/fraud levels remain constant through out the process, the dealers might as well not be in business. They might as well go out and earn a living some other way. Dealers on the streets of Shenzen can sell you watches for $150 all day long. You know why? They have ZERO risk. They are accepting cash only, they aren't shipping anything, they don't need to warranty their product, once they have the cash, it's over. Police are unlikely to do anything to them, they don't have to worry about credit card fraud, shipping, frozen paypal accounts etc. Plus their cost of living is unimaginably low, so if they make $5 profit from each sale, that's just great for them. For our dealers, that doesn't even cover the suckpal fees. I have an idea, how about all of our dealers start accepting only cash in the mail, and in turn, they agree to lower their prices by 10-30%? I think that with prices going up, people should just more carefully pick and choose which models they want. Take some time to consider exactly what you want before buying it, as now it's going to be a little more pricey of an investment.

Exploding crystal: the crystal factory has switched to a much cheaper material. I had this happen to me about 2 months back, posted in the "repair" forum, and at that time no one had ever heard of this happening. Now it's a common occurance.

Paypal also locked two of my accounts, because someone who bought a watch from me on here posted a LINK to the for sale forum on this site! Locked and gone for good. Also spoke with the owner of Timeswiss.com, his accounts were all locked, and they had to start using a payment gateway to accept funds. I feel sorry for everyone whose payments were frozen for 180 days. Paypal is pretty lame.

I sent a watch toGermany last week, also taken by customs. It was a PAM253. very fun.

I recieved my Speedmaster moon watch (with 175 movement) today and I'm convinced this is the wrong size. The bezel measures 38mm (the entire case INCLUDING the crown is just 43mm). I thought it was supposed to be 40mm without the crown? Omega says 40mm, trusty's site says 40mm, everyone else's site says 40mm. Did I just recieve the speedmaster "reduced" version that Omega just released? I owned one of these a long time ago and I swear it was bigger! http://www.omegawatches.com/index.php?id=3...&no_cache=1

So I'm sitting there on my PC about 30 minutes ago, typing away, not wearing any watch, when I hear this "POP!". I look over into my watch box and my 1950 crystal has exploded outwards. This is the "Ultimate version with viagra blue AR coating" etc etc etc. Literally just popped while it was sitting there. This has happened to two other people I know as well, and at first I did not believe them, I thought they must have dropped it or something. My question is; is replacing the crystal going to fix this? Or... is it a problem with the bezel somehow being at a slight angle or something which puts enough pressure on the crystal to eventually break it? Anyone else had this problem, then replaced the crystal, and not had another problem for a long time. Seems to happened frequently with the 127 and 217 models.

Nice to know you got something nice in the mail instead of a torn up box with green customs tape all over it and missing watches, like the one I recieved today!

I forgot, this forum is full of crybabies. What good is off topic if you can't post political discussions. This forum slides further down the hill every day.

North Korea is test launching missles again, surprise surprise. The last time they did it, I was living in Japan, and they fired the missle OVER Japan and into the ocean. I'm surprised that Japan did not call for a strike. Now they have launched one which aparently "malfunctioned" during flight. I wonder if the USA just shot it down? Should they be stopped or not? They are developing nuclear capabilities, and they refuse to listen to the UN, Japan, and South Korea. Are they a danger? Your opinions..

looks to be loosly based on the 163 radiomir case. As mentioned above, seems kind of pointless unless you have the car. I think it was probably made specifically for Ferrari owners.