Guangzhou Watch Markets "live" Report Part Two

[tvt]

So I had the opportunity to return the land where the streets are paved in watches today and I was again both surprised and confused by what I saw.

I managed to get lost getting there because cab drivers do not seem to know this market. It is probably because it is NOT a common tourist destination or even a local destination; rather it is watch retailers traveling here from across Asia to stock up. THEY know where it is so cab drivers don't.

After wondering through the main train station (where tens of thousands of people ebb and flow like the sea) I managed to find my way back to the watch markets and continued my exploration.

I headed directly to the booth in the Southern Watch Terminal Trade Center (one of the largest malls full of fakes) that had my 036 yesterday. They had a very good ETA based Santos I was eyeing and I decided to pick it up on this trip. Well much to my surprise it was gone, as was most of the watches I saw yesterday. It seems that these booths, at least the prime ones, sell so often and so fast that inventory rolls over at a constant rate. I was learning that you must buy when you see what you want because the next day or even the next hour things will be different. Still, he managed to pull out some good quality Panerais and as I browsed his booth I noticed that ALL of his watches seemed very good. I asked "Swiss or Chinese?" He looked almost insulted and said "ALL SWISS, ALL SWISS, ONLY SWISS FOR ME" and then literally, no joke said "A NUMBER ONE ONLY!" In a heavy Chinese accent... very funny.

SO I looked at a 188 (previous model, non recessed sub dials) and a 19 as well as a white faced GMT which I had not seen before. The GMT was quite good suffering only from weak magnification on the date... it had a functioning GMT hand and again, a very nice band (they have made HUGE improvements in that area). I wanted the 188 but this particular one seemed to have a sticky pusher and we all know the Asian Valjoux if a questionable movement so the last thing I wanted was a lemon. I tried to explain that I wanted a different copy of this same model. There was no way to get that across so I finally said I wanted TWO of these. I figured I would then choose the good one and reject the bad. He said he had them and then pulled out the black-faced 196... to him they were the same. I said "Now WHITE face" and while I think he understood no more were produced for me so I passed. I did pick up the white GMT... because it had the GMT function I had to pay more, $115 or so.

I looked at other watches in his booth and then a Chinese man came up and started negotiating for some Pateks. I watched as the calculator was passed back and forth and to my surprise and delight I saw the prices he was being quoted were the same or very close to what I was being told. I then started to realize that for the high end watches there is very little room for negotiation. The Asian stuff, forget about it, offer them half and they jump at it... but the Swiss stuff is RARE in this market and they can command the best price.

I decided to look at some subs and this is when I learned another interesting lesson... the same booth would sell WILDLY varying quality of the same watch. One sub was great, top of the line sub no doubt... only the damn crown was busted. So I asked for another and he produced a nice sub but with not only the wrong font date but also a HUGE magnification. Now I have never seen a fake that was OVER magnified but this was it... must have been like 4X mag! So I pointed out the difference and then he pulled out a Sea Dweller. Well that was damn near perfect but a friend wanted a SUB, not a SD so I passed again. He told me come back in an hour and a half and he would have the sub... OK, fine.

I was starting to get overwhelmed by now. You cannot imagine the commotion going on all around you. These things start to lose any value for you at some point... there are so many just PILED into cases that you cannot differentiate one from the next. Everything I know about spotting good fakes was rapidly leaking from my head. I decided I had had enough... I would be happy with my one GMT and head out.

Before doing so I took a lap around yet another mall I had not seen the previous day. I stumbled upon it after going out a side entrance and while it was similar to the others it was also more cramped and even busier.

I saw one dealer selling nothing but fake papers, Holograms and hang tags of every possible watch brand. I was tempted to pick up a few sheets of holograms... they come on 8x10 sheets with like 50 or so stickers per sheet. I decided against it...why I really don't know... overload I guess.

As I made a last final lap seeing nothing but junk after more junk (being here for any period of time makes you start to view EVERYTHING other than the cream of the crop as absolute crap) BAM, suddenly another case chock full of nothing but top of the line Swiss fakes. The girl working the booth looked to be about 14 and spoke NO English. She was probably 18 in reality but looked pre-pubescent to me... think about hookers you see in movies about the Vietnam war... that is what we are talking here, she may have weighed 90 pounds. I see the 188 proudly sitting in the case (you will notice that the Swiss stuff usually is more nicely displayed while the Asian stuff slums it in mass piles of other time pieces). She quoted me the exact same price as the other guys had... I was seeing again that these prices are true wholesale, not as much bickering and negotiating as I was thinking there was. She also had some nice Franck Muller Vegas watches, which I was looking for, and this leads me to another true revelation...

There are 100% either different factories making these or at the very least different versions of each watch. I tend to think different factories though. Previously I thought that all of these more or less came from the exact same factory... that all the dealers had the exact same stuff... WRONG. You see, in my search for the nicest Vegas watch I saw AT LEAST 5 different versions. This is not including the many other non-functioning complication versions, I saw at least 5 that had the working Vegas spinning hand feature. The printing on the dials varied quite a bit, some were fuzzy and crappy, others crisp and sharp. Some were heavy and solid, some were cheap and light weight. Yet all were quoted to me at the exact same price (about $15 - $18_ regardless of quality.

I had previously found a Vegas I liked but he would only sell to me in a minimum of 5-watch order, this young girl had no such restrictions. I could not help thinking to myself "Maybe this is what my new Daughter would be doing in 14 years if we did not adopt her). She only had the good Vegas I wanted on a leather band, I wanted SS. I managed to communicate this to her and she gladly swapped bands for me... as this was happening something interesting happened... I will tell you about that in the next post.

[M5kirk]

Great posts! Keep 'em coming.

Cheers!

Kirk

[chrgod]

Interesting post.

I remember this story... Glad you reposted this from RWG1.