Guangzhou Watch Markets "live" Report Part Four

[tvt]

We have made it back safely to the U.S. and lucky for me we breezed through customs both in Hong Kong and the U.S., meaning my watch collection has now grown a little bit.

Between traveling 20 hours and having a ten month old who thinks 7 at night is 7 in the morning and vice versa I have had virtually no sleep over the past three days, maybe 5 hours tops.

All that not withstanding I thought I would add a few more random thoughts on what I experienced in China, a few things I could not really work into my previous posts.

First of all it is truly hard to explain just how massive these markets are. I said this before but I really think it bears repeating... there are MILLIONS of watches in these markets being dealt with. I mean quite literally MILLIONS. Each case is overflowing with hundreds of watches (well most of them are, some choose to go for a more high end, "sparse" look meaning they only have say 100 or so per case). There are hundreds and hundreds of individual dealers, and I am only counting the watches I could see... not the bulk of the inventory held under the counters in back rooms and out of site warehouses. Other than perhaps some Swiss mega watch warehouse or something I find it hard to imagine that more watches exist in one place than right there in these watch markets in Guangzhou China.

For example one very small dealer, the guy who had the PAM 036 I bought (still the best damn crown I have ever seen on a rep, just perfect) had only 100 or so watches in his case. All "Swiss" he claimed and from the looks I believe him, or more to the point all high end for some, like the 196, surely do not have a Swiss movement. Anyway, I would ask him about models he did not have on display, say a Two Tone Submariner or a PAM 188. These dealers have full color watch brochures you can look through and point out watches you are interested in. All the major brands are represented and they are very nicely organized and put together. Some even have histories of the original companies and so forth, which I find particularly funny. So I would point out a watch or two he did not have on display and every single time he simply reached below the counter and produced what I was looking for. It became almost a little game. He would find these watches so quickly I cannot imagine what kind of watch filing system he had going on down there...

Pam 188... BAM! Out comes a small plastic bag containing the watch within seconds.

Vintage Rolex Explorer... BAM! It appears as if by magic.

Lets go for a Swiss Franck Muller, don't see those often... there it is, produced at his fingertips within moments.

Comically the only thing he had to make me wait for is a plain old Submariner... maybe it is so popular he sells out, maybe he fancies himself more of an "exotic" dealer... who knows. But my point is that what the eye sees represents only a tiny fraction of what is actually for sale.

Now some more info on prices. Lets keep things in perspective and this may help do just that. While in China we needed diapers and other supplies for the new baby. It may come as a small surprise to some but Wal-Mart and other big chain stores have made there way to China. Now there are differences of course. For example the Wal-Mart we were taken to sells live turtles and bullfrogs, and NOT in the pet section. These are food items, along with many kinds of fish, crabs, sea slugs and the like... all live. In the "butcher" case you would see items such as whole pigs heads, many kinds of whole ducks and other fowl and various dried skins and organs. So this is like Wal-Mart from some bizarre alien world. But like all such stores these days they have a DVD section. Brand new on DVD was Batman Begins. Now mind you, these are NOT copies or pirated in any way. These are on sale in a MAJOR AMERICAN STORE. They are in a large freestanding Batman specific display. All the Warner Brothers holograms and seals are in tact. Any one want to guess the price of these new, blockbuster DVDs?

$20? Nah, that's American prices.

$15? Nope, nobody is going to pay that here.

$10? Still too high...

They are slightly over $2, yes TWO DOLLARS. About $2 and 20 cents to be exact. These are just like our DVDs, full cases, all the extras, the whole deal... for prices we would think are almost free.

My point again is that in China the rules of costs as we as westerners know them are all out the window. Obviously they can sell enough DVDs at $2 each to make a profit. Perhaps they spur people to buy a DVD player (which they had one model for sale for about $10!) Who knows... but the costs of goods and services in China simply do not relate to those costs in the U.S. Thus we have to keep that in mind when looking at how cheap the wholesale fake watches sell for.

Another interesting note was the total lack of quality control. There was one dealer who was showing me a 196 and the bottom pusher was just jammed in there and stuck. I pointed this but but he either could not understand me or chose to ignore me. Here was a brand new watch flat busted and pretty much worthless... I saw this type of thing again and again, and you that I was only looking at the high-end stuff, imagine the quality issues with the massive majority of the watches on sale here, all the low quality Asian stuff. You need to check each watch with extreme care. Several watches I looked at broke in my hands. I pulled the stem right out of one Patek I was looking at, fortunately the dealer did not see this and I jammed it back in and handed it over before anything could be said. They will sell anything they have on hand, in fact they would probably prefer to sell the broken stuff, they don't want to be stuck with it!

Many of the dealers want to quote you "wholesale" prices meaning you need a minimum of 5 watches to qualify... though you can get around this by looking and asking enough people. Which again illustrates the point that "rules" are something the Chinese take lightly. Take a cab ride and you will immediately understand what I mean. Cars driving on the wrong side of the road, or the sidewalk. Red lights may me stop, or go, or slow down, or speed up, or go diagonally through the intersection weaving around both pedestrians and vehicles with total disregard. You can walk on the walk sign, but you have every bit as much of a chance of being his as if it said don't walk. People casually walk along and across major ten lane highways with cars whizzing by at 65 MPH. One of the funniest thing to witness is major super highways with cars FLYING past and then old ladies running out into the traffic with old fashioned straw brooms to sweep up some little bit of trash or what have you. On a trip back from the watch market my cab struck a woman crossing the street with a giant bundle of rice or something on her shoulder and totally blocking her view of oncoming traffic. I saw her, I am sure the cab driver saw her... but cars will NOT stop for pedestrians and pedestrians seem to taunt cars by crossing willy nilly in front of them with total lack of any caution whatsoever. She rolled up and off the hood, stood up and kept walking as if nothing special had happened. The cab driver mumbled and kept driving. A few moments later we were slammed from behind as another can rear-ended us, I guess we were going to slowly for him. The pre-recorded message that plays when you get into a cab says something in Chinese, then in a very heavy accent says, in English "please fasten your seat belt"... great, I agree, fasten those mothers up... but you know what? THERE ARE NO SEAT BELTS! Not in one single cab did I ever see a seat belt. And this illustrates the idea that the Chinese like to pretend to have rules, when really very few apply. They may pretend to have raids on fake watch dealers when in reality they turn a blind eye. This is all major business to them, fake watches, hand bags, pens, jeans, C-Ds, cars, computers, EVERYTHING. This keeps people employed. Rules are suggestions... not rigid parameters that must be followed. This culture would be almost impossible to break of its habits. Maybe in years and years, but certainly not anytime soon.

It's also a country of great contrasts. In the shadows of huge and modern sky scrapers you will find shirtless vendors selling scorpions and live snakes out of buckets, or maybe dried snakes pulled straight, then tied in huge bundles and stood on end like giant sheafs of wheat. The Guangzhou airport is one of the newest and most modern in the world and yet people buy live chickens from crates on the street corner as if it were a couple hundred years ago. It is all quite something to see... and quite worth a trip. But now our newest edition to the family is crying and it looks like another night of 2 hours sleep... so I have to run, hopefully my watch booty which I have neatly spread on the dining room table will get me through the night.

[paulV]

Thank you tvt for sharing this unbelievable experience. I really enjoyed it...thanks !

[KB]

TVT thank you for this wonderful blast from the past, your series of travel notes and stories of the watch markets are still amongst the best writing that I have seen in my time with these watch forums and as such are stories that I can happily read again and again.

I do also hope all is well with your little addition to your family who must be way past (his/her?) 1st Birthday by now.

Cheers

ken

[Guest aclaimsman]

Thank you tvt for sharing this unbelievable experience. I really enjoyed it...thanks !

Great story, I enjoyed it very much.

[tvt]

Thanks guys...

Yes Ken... our daughter turns two next week!

Time flies (no pun intended)

In fact reading my posts again makes me remember so much that I had forgotten... I need to get back there soon!

[aeroguy]

I'm not even going to comment on the driving here. It's soooo bad that my company won't allow me to drive. I have to have a driver, and while that sounds like a good thing... it's not. We Americans like to drive and the way they drive here, well lets just say... I use an eye shade and pop in my earphones while bring driven. Otherwise my blood pressure rises to unsafe levels.

I did like the Walmart comment though (we have two here in my town). The most bizzaro thing about the Walmarts and the McDonalds is that skinny people work and shop there. Quite a contrast to the USA versions. Strangely, Pizza Hut like the hottest ticket in town. There is (no kidding) a two hour wait at dinner time each night.

Before I relocated to China I loved Chinese food... China has the absolute worst Chinese food ;-)

[leeson43]

looks fantastic, at a rough guess how much would a trip cost to Guangzhou from the uk...and i mean a very rough guess

[cheepoguy]

Ah, brings back memories. I lived in Guangzhou from 1990 to 1992. I actually opened the office for the company I was working for at the time. Talk about exciting. A half wit Paddy with kids who had flame red hair and freckles. The locals had never seen anything like it and used to touch the kids hair and skin in the street all the time. They even gave me craem for the kids "bad skin condition". It was a lot different to the Guangzhou you saw. I really enjoyed my time there, however, it was incredably polluted. I actually picked up a genuine Rolex Airking for not a lot of money. Most of the watches at that time were actually real but with very bad redials. The Rolex I got was perfect but running eratically. I had it serviced in Seoul and it has run like a chanp ever since. The wife wears it now. The bracelet in the image was one I used as my wife is Korean and has minute wrists. I've since managed to "shrink" the original bracelet which is now on the watch.

I went back there in 1999 and what a change to it. I'll bet I wouldn't recognise the Garden hotel and China hotel anymore.

Sounds like you had a great trip. Thanks for the memory tug :-)

Cheepo

[tvt]

I had heard that GZ was polluted before visiting but I found it to be no worse than any major city. We stayed at the White Swan which has become this odd mix of a luxury business hotel and aan adoption family hotel. It is very funny seeing dozens and doznes of white couples with newly adopted Chinese babies. It is however very nice and I would say without equal in GZ.

As far as how much it would cost, I have no idea from the UK, look into plane fairs. I can tell you that from major cities in the U.S. you can often find fairly cheap flights to Hong Kong, like $700. From there you can take a very short flight to GZ. Once there everything will be about a tenth of what you would pay in London. Even very nice hotels might run $80 a night instead of $350 plus. You can find cheap hotels for MUCH less.

I would NOT go to GZ JUST for watches, but take a trip to HK and then a side trip to GZ for maybe 2 days, now THAT could be fun.

[Richard Tracy]

Wow ! That was a great read TVT,... I have not been to Asia for over 20 years now,

but still, the feeling of China was evident throughout your post...

It brought me back there again, if only for a moment...

You should consider becoming a writer... and I also thank you for your

gift of a dream to go back there, and come back with some booty !

The first time there I was green in rep-ology...

Hey Cheepoguy, that is a gorgeous Airking,.... too bad there are no serious reps of

that model.... or are they ??

[cheepoguy]

Richard,

thanks. yep it is nice. Mid size so I never wore it much and just kept it in a draweer. I was going to sell it and showed it to the wife. She jumped up and down and said it was exactly the same watch as her father's. Her brother got the watch when her dad passed away. So I did the only descent thing I could and gave it to her. It was very difficult to resize the bracelet as even with all the removavble links out it was still too big. I tok it to watchmakere who did an tremendous job resizing it. So now the wife is realy happy that it has the original bracelet and is identical to the watch her father used to wear.

As for Reps. Can't say I have ever seen one before, but I think they would be well worth repping.

Cheepo.