I've had a similar experience, I always thought that one of my professors made a lot of money because he would have a different expensive swiss watch every day of the week. But after I learned about reps. and the differences between reps and gens, I realized all his watches were cheap asian reps.
His breitling didn't have any AR and all his chrono watches had the large hand always ticking (cheap quarts movements)
I can't believe I was ever fooled by them knowing what I know now.