How did you discover replicas?

[Matt_24]

How did you discover the world of replica watches?

I guess my "discovery" started in highschool (and I'm 31 years old). I've always liked watches. I remember specifically in the 9th grade when a friend of mine was wearing a Rolex Day-Date in class. It was very loose on his wrist and I inquired about it. He let me hold it and told me that his dad went to NYC on business a lot and would always buy my friend and his brother a fake Rolex as kind of a gag gift. I immediately had to have one. He sold it to me for $40 (in 92....what would that be in today's dollars?) and I couldn't tell you what ever happened to that watch, LOL.

Fast forward 13 years later. I enjoy playing pool and had a pal that did cue repair. A lot of guys would hang out in his shop and shoot the breeze while this friend would work on repairing our cues. There was one very wealthy gentleman who was always there and he always had gorgeous watches. This guy was a car NUT. He had a beautiful silver Porsche 911 Turbo with blood red leather interior. He two Audi's....he just had lots of nice cars...and a different gorgeous watch for every day of the week. I inquired with him about a beautiful two-tone "blue dial" Submariner he had on and he let me know it was fake...that he only purchased replica watches. He told me he did own a real Rolex President and he always kicked himself for spending the much on a watch and never wore it for fear of damaging it. He would rather spend his money on cars and other items.

So....with that in mind, years later I finally took enough interest to find myself a decent replica Submariner, discovered the forums first (thankfully) and the rest as they say is history.

[Packard]

A friend of mine in the early 1980s traveled to Europe frequently and brought back Rolex forgeries. This was his claim:

1. The forgeries were made in Switzerland

2. The crystal was from the same vendor that Rolex bought it from (there are crooks all over the world).

3. The cartons and instructions and all packing were genuine Rolex

4. The gold was solid through and through

5. Only a jeweler could tell it from the original

In 1980 he was charging $250.00 (which is about $650 in 2009) so I have doubts about the "solid gold" aspect. The cartons may have been "appropriated" from the carton manufacturer so that might be true. When he brought it into London Jewelers (an authorized Rolex dealer) the salesman was fooled, but the jewelry repairman said, "Where did you get this? It doesn't seem quite right." But all in all a pretty good job.

I was smitten. But my first one (in 1990) cost $50.00 and was junk. The gold wore off and the clasp wouldn't clasp. The only thing it did right was tell time. I don't know what happened to it.

A co-worker just got a Breguet replica (he has a genuine Tissot automatic) and I said, "Oh, you got a raise." And he replied, "It's just a replica."

I looked at a bunch of websites but they all looked hooey to me so I googled "watch replica forums" to see what you guys had to say about vendors.

(I'm waiting by the mail box now for my new Rolex--it should come in tomorrow.)

[Packard]

How did you discover the world of replica watches?

...He sold it to me for $40 (in 92....what would that be in today's dollars?...

$61.49

http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl

[TeeJay]

I looked into buying a Submariner a few years ago, but felt that the watch wasn't worth the asking price, so I started looking at fakes online and ordered one (for about $800) I was happy with it as a watch, but didn't feel 100% comfortable wearing a Rolex in my late twenties, and started looking at Omega reps as a replacement. I eventually sold the Sub to pay for costs for my wedding. I can't say I regret selling it, as the money it bought in went to a good cause, and, the person who bought it confirmed that it did indeed have a Swiss movement in it, so at least I know that, although I got over-charged by the 'scam site', I at least got what I paid for (and for less than a gen Sub would have cost)

[Guest HaloArchive]

I got my first rep while on vacation in Flordia from some big black guy. I got it for $25 and it was a Rolex Date-Just. It broke within 8 months but, hell, it was only $25

H

[OmegaPOFL]

i desperately wanted a panerai.... started looking for fake ones, then found rwi, heard about rwg from it and then rg.

lol my first rep ended up being a breitling soh!

now on the prowl for a 127 or 183

[Mardo]

Searching for a new gen watch purchase, Chopard MM, and discovered RWG. Since then my eyes have been opened to so many other brands and the world of reps.

Thank goodness I didn't drop the 4G's on the Chopard because I now have 6 reps for half that price!

[Wayward]

Bought a Rolex Datejust on holiday in Corfu for

[Panoris]

Bought a Rolex Datejust on holiday in Corfu for

[Member X]

I was looking into getting a watch for a 'big' birthday as I had one for a previous 'big' birthday and it's nice to get something to keep that means something

Unfortunately I was looking at B&Rs, which I soon found out are slightly above my budget... lol

One of the guys on another forum I'm on that is unrelated to watches gave me a link to this place and hey presto - after resisting the temptation to splash out on the first thing I fancied, I'm now awaiting a WM9/BK SD and a 1939 Portugueser

[Guest techlogik]

My story is a bit different, thanks to Tag Heuer, I swore off that brand of Gens, and most others, although maybe not warranted, for good.

Bought a Gen Tag Professional about 7 years ago. Dropped 1K from a Rep AD. I walk out of the store after getting the band adjusted and take a seat and have a starbucks and start to admire my watch.

I then notice two glaring problems. 1) There was a speck on the dial under the crystal?!?! Since the dial is white, it was a dark piece. I thought WTF kind of QC is this for a $1K watch? Albeit it is middle of the road for them with a quartz movement. 2) The second hand doesn't strike right on the dial second markers. It is off slightly at times, or right in the middle of the markets. Talk about nuisance.

I take it back to the AD and point this out. Ask if they crack these things open and how dirt/debris can get under the glass, he says it was new right out of the box. But he can get it out. So he removes the debris and gives it back.

Here is the really good part. I ask about the second hand not striking the markers right on. You would think with a quartz movement, it will hit the same spot everytime, you just need to have tight tolerances on your dial markers and ensure it is accurate and not lopsided so to speak as the second hand moves around the dial. Well NAY...apparently Tag can't get a tolerance and design right so the hand actually strikes the marker, like their advertising material and videos of course show.

The AD guy then says "Hey, what do you expect, it's not like it is a $6k Rolex."

So, they didn't have another one in the color I wanted, so I "settled" like a moron and have it to this day. Quartz is dead accurate, like within 1 second year, crazy scary. But the idea of the second hand not hitting the markers still bugs me to this day. My own fault, should have got my money back.

How Tag with their rep would let a $1k watch out of their door with such crappy QC is beyond me. They probably outsource this model to China for $75 in cost, then sell it for $1k at the time.

Now I know all Gens don't have these problems, but if Tag is willing to let one go out like this, how many others do they let out with crappy QC. We are talking "Swiss timepiece craftmanship" blah blah...

I'm sure it was just a one time thing, or very rare, but I said, to heck with this. Now at the time, replicas were pure garbage 7-8 years ago. Nothing was good. But since I like timepieces and many of the design styles, I started getting back into today. The replicas today are light years ahead and never been so good.

I also decided over the past two years that I am divesting myself of stupid materialistic luxury goods, my M3, my plan to get a 996TT after I sold that, other stupid material items. They depreciate like nobody's business, as watches do too, and you can't realy enjoy them it seems.

So, thanks to Tag, I am a rep collector now, or off beat manufacturer collector with quality and sub $500 prices. Hey, I still need to have some luxury stuff, but at least I can enjoy timepieces throughout the day, unlike my euro sport cars that only sit in traffic at $3+ gal gas and can't experience the limits and joy on our roads.

Edited July 20, 2009 by techlogik

[jkerouac]

My first encounter was in the parking lot of a Houston Dennys (or similar), when a cowboy walked up and offered me a "Rolex" for $20 bucks. Even from a distance you could tell it was a piece of crap (even the logo was crooked0.

Next sightings were in Tijuana, where the options were not even remotely tempting.

Flash forward to ab. 7-8 years ago when my brother gave me a Rolex. After getting over the immediate rush of thinking what a great brother I have, he told me it was a rep that he purchased during a visit to Hong Kong with his Chinese girlfriend. A decent watch, certainly better than any reps I had seen before, but not like today's standards.

A few years later, following a visit to Switzerland I wanted to buy a decent watch and started to research the options on the Web. I started to consider reps again, and was fortunate enough to find RWG 1 and TRC, and that was the start of rep collecting for me. In hindsight, it would have been a lot cheaper to just buy a nice gen, but of course it would have been far less interesting.

[jmd33]

What a great thread!!!

Mine started back in the 80's with a drunken trip to Tijuana and both my buddy and I buying the biggest POS quartz Rolexes you've seen (we were so f'ing cool back then with our watches and mullets).

Fast forward xx years (holy sh!t, that went fast) and the search for a gen sub (well not really a search given they are in every mall from coast to coast), but one a decent price.

Some internet searching, reps comming up - but the websites smelling bad, and stumbling into both this place and RWI - that was about it.

Now all I hear from my wife is the pissing and moaning that comes with this hobby - come on, you've all been there too - "another watch?!?" "is that one real or fake?" "you are on that site again?!?".

[hey, at least it ain't porn - I could be doing much worse stuff with my time and $$, right?????].

[automatico]

I first saw "swiss fakes" at trade meets etc. They were swiss made fake American brand pocket watches made to fool PW buyers and collectors. Back then, they were not very hot but now there are a few guys who collect them. Most of them were already worn out by the time I saw them so they were not worth much at all. Here is some info on them:

http://www.antique-pocket-watch.com/fake-pocket-watches.html

The first high quality replica wristwatches I saw were redialed steel, gold, and gold filled common watches redialed to vacheron, patek, AP, etc in the 1970s/1980s/1990s. I still have a few from back then...an IWC "Ingenieur" made out of a steel Nivada automatic, a tutone E Gubelin made from a Baylor automatic chronometer etc...pretty good stuff and they sold for $100 up.

I started seeing "factory made" rolex replicas now and then in the late 1970s but they were junk for sure and I did not pay much attention to them. Most had swiss 1 jewel pin lever movements and were pretty bad overall. I still have a replica 1 jewel "Longines" and a "Seiko" from back then and they both will run it you wind them a few turns. They sold for $12 to $15.

There were also a lot of fake 1 jewel Bulovas around back then with box and papers but if you looked closely, they had "Bolivia" on the dial. They were $20 to $40.

The next wave of replica rolex that showed up were different types of steel case DJ with good dials and Harley Ronda quartz movements. They went for $50 to $100 depending on who had them for sale.

In the 1980s I saw an ad in USA Today for replica watches with a toll free phone number...so I called it.

The number was an answering service in NYC and they took my phone number and said "Andy" would call me back.

"Andy" called back in about 15 minutes and said he would send a catalog so I gave him a mailing address and the catalog showed up in a few days. There were about 50 or 75 different brands and models in the catalog so I picked out a few watches and called the toll free number and left my phone number again.

"Andy" called back and I gave him the order and he said the watches would show up in a few days COD. They were pretty good...Eta powered steel DJ were $75 each (had to buy 3, otherwise they were $100 each), and the quartz rolex replicas looked Ok but were base metal and were $24 each.

I made a few orders with "Andy" and all in all, the watches were pretty good for the price, especially the Eta models. I still have a gold plated (g/p over steel) day/date from back then and it runs and keeps good time 20+ years later.

This was just about all I had until the internet came around and I started buying a few off the 'net starting in the mid 1990s. (I saw where one guy I talked to on the phone about fakes in the 1990s selling on the'net had been busted and got 3 years in prison)

I joined RWCC, TRC (member 43), and RWG.

In 2001/2002 the famous WLD tried to screw me on a deal and I slacked off buying replicas. A friend got a few from "Paul" a few years back and passed them on to me but that's about it.

I mostly work on genuine watches but am one of the few watch-hacks around here who will work on replicas so I still see a few.

[scotty]

Happily had a gen Omega SMP, and told all I was a one watch guy.

Saw Transporter II and fixed on the watch - 196 Daylight.

Googled and found the gen and loved it, but having googled found rep sites.

Bought one after some deliberation, only to find the crown fell off.

Researched my purchase to find I'd been fleeced - t'was a A7750 and not a 7753. Learned post purchase of the 10 date change etc.

Got my money back, found Trusty, found RWG, and it all went from there.

2 years, endless hours on RWG, Rg and dealer sites, and few good transactions with members, and a lot of time reading, I've a small collection I'm happy with, but am left with a horrible urge to branch out to other brands.

Grail watch - the 196 - now finished (see other thread re. Grail 196 in Panerai section).....

[Member X]

I made a few orders with "Andy" and all in all, the watches were pretty good for the price, especially the Eta models. I still have a gold plated (g/p over steel) day/date from back then and it runs and keeps good time 20+ years later.

This was just about all I had until the internet came around and I started buying a few off the 'net starting in the mid 1990s. (I saw where one guy I talked to on the phone about fakes in the 1990s selling on the'net had been busted and got 3 years in prison)

Do you know what - I didn't even think about how much the internet must have impacted on things!

Without the 'net I don't see how any community or knowledge base such as this could have flourished - we must have literally been at the mercy of whatever the factories and dealers wanted to sell us!

[Steve52]

I've always wanted a Breitling, but just wouldn't give up the cash. In September of 2008 a customer had on a Bentley which he was VERY proud of. I started looking for a used one on line and came across references to replica watches. Did a little more research and found RWC the same night. Joined immediately! Read non-stop for days, then decided to buy an Ebel BTR. Six reps later, I'm still looking for more. I love this place! Family!!

[Matt_24]

I've always wanted a Breitling, but just wouldn't give up the cash. In September of 2008 a customer had on a Bentley which he was VERY proud of. I started looking for a used one on line and came across references to replica watches. Did a little more research and found RWC the same night. Joined immediately! Read non-stop for days, then decided to buy an Ebel BTR. Six reps later, I'm still looking for more. I love this place! Family!!

Thank you for all of your responses.