Please pardon my ignorance since I am relatively new to RWG, but who is DW, Natalie and Phong? Could you provide a site for me to check out their items?
Also, I'm not sure if I am grasping the argument here correctly or not. This is my take on the replicas: The majority of rep sales are to people who want a watch that will make others believe that it is real and in the end they will have saved thousands of dollars or pounds. To this end, the sales are most often of popular watches that buyers associate with the name (e.g., Submariner, Day Date). For these buyers the image portrayed to others is more important than the satisfaction of having such a watch. Please don't misinterpret this and I must put a caveat to this and that is I am referring to the most common situation (tourists/canal street as it was mentioned). In respect to the other buyers, whom I would categorize as a WIS, a rep is owned with the intent to replicate the genuine and, therefore, is owned for more of a personal satisfaction. Here enters the buyer looking for a vintage piece or an item that is not popular with the masses. I would say that a Rolex Daytona with a Paul Newman dial or an Explorer with a Steve McQueen dial would be representative of this. A Patek Philippe Complication would definitely be such a watch because few people outside of WIS/collectors would even know what these are. In other words, a Rolex Submariner would most likely catch the eye of an unassuming onlooker more than a Patek 1673. I may be wrong, but this is just an opinion.
I cannot tell you the number of times someone looks at my genuine Rolex GMTIIC and says "Is that a new Submariner?" or "I like your Submariner."
Cheers!