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.

I think you are right. One is for sure - in most countries, and for sure in the US and EU, even to the top in G7, counterfeiting has become a hot issue. Industries fights for their bottom line results, countries for their tax income, and they more and more often team up to fight against these 'serious echonomical crimes who funds terrorism'. Reading official documents makes it very clear that this is regarded as a serious threat, and that harmonized action plans has been established and is in the progress of beeing implemented in the field. For EU countries, the deadline for harmonized legislation was sept./oct. '07, and measures as a common 'Customs Information System', financial tracking and analyzis systems (AML), partnership programmes with various industries (including dedicated customs personell trained by the industries) is in it's early phase of operation. However, I do think that we are a small [censored] in the corner for the time beeing - as always they hunt the biggest fishes in the first place, after all watches does not represent the same value and implications as other fakes like medecines, electronics, car and aero parts a.s.o. do. But we are for sure not excluded from the picture, and for sure a lot of information has already been gathered concerning players and financial aspects of the activity, most of it by the industry itself. Posting info on boards like this will not change anything. Other than taking normal precautions not to exploit more info about yourself and others than necessary, act as normal. To avoid search engines to access the pages can stop Google and the likes, but it will never stop the spiders/crawlers combined with the data mining techniques of the authorities or companies investigating these matters, absolutly not. They are far more sophisticated than most people can imagine, add that to the fact that they have access to financial transactions, personal data, communication (traffic) data, and much more. To conclude, the best thing to do is to behave as normal, don't let CFO's of Hublot get [censored] off, say no more (personal info) than you have to, and always remember that it's almost impossible (for a normal activity) to hide on the web if someone with the right tools at hand really wants to find you. This is a public place, never ever forget that. We are the small fishes in the bowl, hopefully we will be regarded as that even in the future.

Agree. With the risk of introducing a new term to be used by the dealers, I would classify such a rep. as a clone. And in fact, they do exist. Another thing, why do people underestimate the skills of chinese manufacturers ? The ch. industry can make whatever you want at the quality level you request, they are not standing back of any country or industry industry in the world. For watches, they produce very HQ movements and cases at the same level as the swiss, at a fraction of the price. This is one of the reasons why the have become the no. 2 (in value) in the total world market, and increasing their share rapidly. On the other hand, they will always try to cut corners to save some money; if their customers accept it they continue to do just that. They are experts in finding the lowest possible quality level their customers will accept without disturbing the business. Therefore, if we accept 1 to be 0.9, their next move is to try out the 0.85 level.

Hmmm, what a nice place this is, I learn a lot here, even math According to some, 1 isn't 1, it may be 0.99 but it can also be 0.5, 0.745, 0.94 ...........using zero decimals I agree that it is 1, however: To me, in this context, 1 is still 1. And for a 1:1 copy, that's exactly what it should be if someone claims it to be. Visually identical in every small detail, including materials, finishing and in touch quality - everything. No exeptions. No room for flaws you can't find on the gen.. Movement is the exeption if it has a solid caseback, otherwise not. A real 1:1 copy should pass an inspection of the experienced eyes of an expert without beeing noticed as a rep. For me the term 1:1 is meaningless, I don't expect to get that kind of reps for the prices we pay, 0.9-95 is in fact very good and the dealers should not be ashamed of the minor flaws one may find. And, what to say the day they really put out a 1:1 rep ? 1:1++ ?

A few words about watches, cars and their owners. In some countries in Europe, cars are the number one tax object. A decent car is very expensive, taxes alone may amount to 50-80% of the list price. Despite this, many people buy cars that are more expensive than their homes; to have a nice car is a status symbol. They buy BMW's, MB's a.s.o., but they can't even afford a garage for it. I don't want to pay a lot for nothing anymore, like I did earlier. Recently, I bought an old Toyota and I'm happy with that. For the amount I pay in VAT for a service on my MB V8, I can buy a nice gen watch (as an example), and I prefer to do just that even if I could afford to do both. So, next time you see me in my old Toyota, I might wear a vey nice watch, but that's not because I can't afford a nice car. I just hate to pay extreme taxes.

Depends on where you live. For many EU countries, they are significatly cheaper now even if the USD list price is higher. I haven't checked the USD development against asian currencies in detail, nor the price increases for reps in %. But the fact is, USD have weakened significantly towards all major currencies, which means that US customers will have to pay equally higher prices for (all) imported goods. So, take this into account before you shoot the collectors.

Hi, maybe a bit off-topic; but you will never ever find good reps from Russia unless you have very good contacts. They do produce reps, or more correct clones, perfect ones that are beeing sold as gens complete with papers and everything in place. Remember that this country is loaded with very high skilled people formerly employed by the authorities, now by someone else.............they have experts in all kind of high level faking. They can (and do) fake everything that brings good money - official documents, id's, historical art, ..........you name it - at a level you thought was impossible. In the former Soviet days their watch industry produced some interresting movements, some of them licenced or stolen from various western companies; these can be bought for very reasonable prices at ebay (e.g. Vostok 'Precision' chronometer for a few $).

Browsing a few of the files mentioned above I found this name: Rasmus Nilsson Maybe some of the Swedish members could use public info to find the correct RN.

Same here. In addition to the high fees, the limit on the amount you can send per month is quite low (at least here in Norway). Futhermore I don't like to be interviewed like a criminal for each transaction before they can 'approve' it. But what really [censored] me off was that some accounting dept. in Switzerland wants a copy of my passport in order to be authorized to do more transactions via WU (due to new legislation I was told).

A possible fake has been spotted on the Omegamania auction in Geneva this weekend - a vintage SM 300, serviced and authenticated by the Omega museum, which was hammered at just below 21.000 Euros. If you search for 'SM300' at TZ you will find a thread with pictures. The auction results in general was by the way sky high, typically 2-3-4 times the high estimates. So then - the noob question; who has this very best sm3oo ?

Correct. With the current (political and thereby the press) focus on the rep industry in general in the western world (at least in EU), you really have to live in a vacum to have missed out what's going on wrt to the activities carried out to by EU and it's member states to stop fake items of all kinds to enter the internal market. On the other hand, there's still a lot of people arguing with confidence that the earth is flat.