jens

For a gen, the only customs issue you might face is VAT. In general, the French customs should collect VAT, whilst you are entitled to get a refund for the VAT paid in the UK. Check out the local procedures on how this is handled in practice, b e f o r e you buy the item (it's important that this is done the right way in order to get a refund, the authorities sometimes can be a pain in the *** you know.....). So, the only risk you run into is double VAT.

Not much I think, but depends on the quality of course. For a typical Chineese reverse-engineering of design only - nothing at all. A copy of the movement design itself represents at least for me no added value ('same [censored], new wrapping' ).

That's not odd at all - the accuracy of a watch depends on how you wear it - the accuracy is very different in different positions (a.o. the friction is different in different positions, in cheap movements more than in expensive ones with highly polished parts and high quality lubrication used). You may measure the accuracy of your watch during 24 hours in use by you, then give it to a friend with a different kind of work and habits, and you will most likely see a significant different result. This is the reason why finer movements are measured and adjusted to temperature and 3-5 positions, (COSC 5 pos). Some more info here: hxxp://chronocentric.com/watches/accuracy.shtml http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COSC

The reason is simply different legislation, in Sweden it's still allowed for a person to import (for private use only) a replica. According to 'Tullverket', repeated imports, or several items in a package, may be concidered as illegal. In other countries you may be fined heavily for the same thing (up to 8k EUR in France I think). Enjoy it while you can; the Swedish legislation may change sooner or later as it's not in line with the intention of the current EU legislation.

Those cameras are indeed fantastic, with outstanding optics, maybe the best ever mass produced lenses in the world for 35mm film cams. My heart screams 'buy', my brain reminds me of the non-digital cameras I already have....hmmm .

I doubt that having this attitude towards members who address an important issue for buyers will bring more supporters onboard. As this board allow all members to post, carlsbadrolex and every member is in their full right to do so, without having comments like this.

cleobis, no no no. You already stated it was a gift, stick to that. If you provide a totally different explanation now, it means that you lied to them in the first place - they don't like that at all, and lying to an official entity as customs is regarded as a serious issue that may bring you into trouble however small it is. As said, stick to the gift explanation. Say it's a gift and due to that you don't know exactly what it is, nor the value, but that you would be very surpriced if the value was more than a 20-30-40 USD (tune this to your possible limits for VAT payment). Furthermore, state that if you have to pay anything for receiving a gift, they can do whatever they want - return it to the sender or whatever. I've used this method once (so has a friend of mine), and as it implies quite some paperworkwork at their side to do that, their attitude might change to your favour if you are lucky. You may loose your watch, which is not a nice thing, but far better than geting involved in a dispute with customs. This is not nice for legal goods, and absolutly not for illegal goods. Loss of a watch is something that happens sometimes in this game . I don't know the exact legal situation re. import or possession of reps in Portugal and how the EU legsilation is implemented w.r.t. end users, you should check that out. What worries me is that people here who don't know either, give advices that may bring you into serious trouble. How US, Canada, Kuala Lumpur or whatever country handles reps is of almost no interrest, what we do know is that in Europe many countries have implemented very strict rules re. counterfeited goods. Both Italy and France are very strict, the latter giving fines of maybe 10.000 EUR for just beeing in posession of a faked product. So please all, if you don't have any knowledge don't give advices that may bring other people who don't know either into trouble.

Canada is not connected; this is a system used by the member states of EU (+ a few more), however you might have similar setups in other countries as well. The WTO and WCO are targeted by EU to cooperate in this field. You can find some general info about CIS and it's intended use in official EU documents here: http://europa.eu/scadplus/leg/en/lvb/l11016.htm http://europa.eu/scadplus/leg/en/lvb/l26057a.htm http://europa.eu/scadplus/leg/en/lvb/l11037.htm jens

I would give it a try. Unless they are able to link it to a financial transaction from you to the sender, they have no reason to hold it further (except for the fact it's a rep of course...but thats a different cup of tea). Remember that the risk that they will use time investigating a small matter like this is minimal, on the other hand never underestimate them when they have started to be curious. Be prepared to answer additional questions when you contact them. By the way, I found info that the Customs Information System was approved for implementation by your government a few years back, so it's probably operational now. To what extent financial transactions are useable in CIS with a certain level of accuracy depends on how well your banking and other payment systems are developed with respect to data interchange (with authorities) and transparency. For most countries, money in an envelope is now the only non-traceable payment method for amateurs like us Good luck !

Duble post

If there isn't cheap and expensive gold, why do you mention rollies, what are you trying to say ?

$10 is indeed a small difference. However, looking at the gold plated gens, the difference in price has nothing to do with the cost of gold used, but everything to do with prestige and marketing. Gold used in gens is probably the most expensive gold you can find on this planet

I'd buy a reverso in the same second as well, have been looking for this for a long time. For me, the single sided (movement) reverso with plain back is of top interrest, actually I find these classics to be the nicest ones.

Whatever you do, DO NOT fake any documents, or ask your dealer to do it. I suggest you contact your dealer and ask exactly what kind of info they put on the package w.r.t. price and customs info (gift/comm. sample a.s.o.) if any. The less info, the better your situation is. If they didn't mention price or other info that proves that you paid for it, AND stated a private (or fake) sender, claim it is a gift. Some dealer do this in a quite clever way, others not. If you can't use this method, the question cannot be answered without knowing more details (payment method,

Hi, First of all, I do agree that one should try to keep a low profile whenever possible. My point is that it will not make a big difference as long as the countfeit business in general is investigated. Your example seems to me to be a classic example of a trademark (or whatsoever) owner that 'found' his product by using a standard search engine, contacted his lawyers who took it from there, and got the result they wanted. Your company was an easy match. The way they explore the counterfeit (and other) business is quite different; they want to go to the heart of things, and open info on a board like this is just a fraction (but still important of course) of the total info they gather. And then who are 'they'? We know from open scources (thanks for that) that the swiss industry have initiated several actions, one of them is to have a leading company in e-intelligence to spider the web in order to get a clear picture of the nature of the industry, who is involved and where to attack. There is reason to beleive that they cooperate with the authorities, as financial flow data will be necessary to make data mining and analyzis models more effective. I have seen the outcome of such data mining methods as used by the tax authorities myself, (luckily not targeted at me), and this is really, really really freightening. They found the tiniest bit of information, combined financial transactions with other info and established the correct relations for what seems to be completly independent material, and made up the complete picture in a correct way. All this by 'simply' applying automated data mining and pattern recognition/analyzis, and let the computer do the legwork. It has to be mentioned that none of the info they found was indexed by any search engine. So I see your point, but I still think we are small fishes - we might even be the bait they need to perform their data mining and analyzis in a more efficient way...... Speaking for my part of the world only, I think the cost/benefit for a manufacturer to sue a single person for such a small value will be far to high, but that might be different in other countries. And you are completly right with respect to assuming something - we should never assume anything.