magicpimp

Hi I saw this link in a thread I was reading, not sure if the idea is dead as the last post was 2011? But I a a Ozzie in Alice Springs, who travels to Melbourne roughly once or twice a year.

Hi and welcome fellow transplanted australian.

Thanks for the welcome guys. I wouldn't say they were 'scammers' zero_deficit, just bad quality watches. It looked pretty much like the photo, just not good quality overall.

Hi I'm new also. I just saw your post, it caught my eye as I bought my first replica watch in Turkey! It was a great piece. Loverly friendly country.

Hi guys Been lurking for a while, decided to say hi and actually become part of the forum. I'm from London, but living in Australia at the moment. I got my first introduction to replica watches while in holiday in Turkey. In turkey they have genuine and replica everything right next to each other from music/cd's to jeans and watches. Me and my brother found a nice watch shop and decided to have a look. The shelves and stands were full of Casio's and timex etc. At the back of the shop there were a few stands with some strange looking time pieces, a few nice seikos and some very dodgy rolexs and a few others. I mean these were not even replicas, just quartz watches with a rolex logo/crown printed on them. One or two had a metal crown on the bezel. The shop owner saw me looking and said 'You look Rolex boss?'. I said yeah but these are not good, do you have better? He then took me over to his counter and pulled a draw out with a small selection of much nicer looking watches. I said I wanted 'no battery, automatic winding, no fake gold' and he handed me a very nice looking day/date oyster. Now I had seen a few fake rolex on friends before, this was a very nice looking watch. The second hand was smooth, the metal looked quality, the engravings looked spot on really well done. It had 'diamond' hour markers and the bezel looked flawless. The only thing was it had pins in the band not screws. I was 19 and this was around 10 years ago, I liked watches but was not a rolex expert. I didn't know about screws in the band. I ended bartering with him, as it was definitely the best looking in the drawer. I think he had a Yatchmaster and a date just, maybe a date just in two tone also. I was never into gold watches. I can't remember the conversation rate or the turkish money, but he asked for the equivalent of around 100 GBP in Turkish Money. I said I could get a real seiko for that money. I had both turkish money and some English notes on me, as I knew Foreign money could be useful when traveling. So I pulled out four crisp 20 Pound notes and offered him 3 of them. I said 'Fresh Sterling', you can cash in when exchange rate is good!' and got the watch for what I felt was a bargain at 60 GBP. I loved this watch for years, it ran a little slow sometimes. But it looked great, one time drinking out with a bunch of workmates, a girl said 'why do you have diamonds in your watch?' one guy asked to see it, i took t off and let him inspect it. He looked it over and said 'I think it's real, it's so smooth the second hand!' Unfortunately it went missing when I moved house a few years later. Since then I have bought a piece of crap datejust from a website (perfect watches.net now .hk) and a very nice milgauss from a market stall in Australia. The datejust was pretty bad, sloppy/misprinted rolex on the dial, bad size chaning numbers datefont and the gold wore off very quickly. But had a decent mechanism/sweeping second hand. The milgauss looked great near perfect, but stopped working after 6 months. I might get it fixed, but worried the watchshop might keep/destroy it. I also got a great seiko 5 series when visiting South America. Not sure if genuine or replica as it is still working after around 6-7 years and have had its band repaired at a watch shop with no questions. But it had both arabic and english numbers for its day on the day/date function. Which was very cool as I could switch between then when setting it. But I have never seen that before! Regards Joe