I'm back...and a bit concerned.

[got-it]

I consider myself a member of this forum for a long time now and I've traded and bought many reps. I've become inactive with the board simply because I haven't been very active with the hobby (gens are keeping me busy). But recently, something was brought to my attention that concerned me a great deal.

I feel like our hobby is becoming more and more well known to the mainstream crowd. Recently, while speaking to a salesman at one of my regularly frequented ADs, I saw someone who obviously bought the rep from one of our dealers, showcasing it off to everyone to see. Granted it was a super rep (it was the concord c1), but this blatant disregard is alarming.

This isn't the only incident that has occurred. I'm a bit worried that this sort of exposure may one day lead to our hobby's doom.

Anyway, just ranting. But it would be nice if we're (especially the newer members) would be more cautious. This hobby should continue it's underground status.

Edited March 29, 2009 by got-it

[maxman]

Thanks for the Post. This issue has been brought up just recently. I agree, the less said the better. Friends and family are one thing, In a ADs shop is somethig completly different. Mike

[lanikai]

Since Christ was a Carpenter ..... Cardinal Rule : Never under any circumstances .. NEVER EVER wear a replicated watch into an AD .. no excuses for this .. !!

[Chicken Manny]

I hate to say it but 'they' are very aware of our groups and study the offerings. Your average AD may or may not pay much attention but a simple google search turns up a ton of RWG posts. I've been surprised that while looking up gen subjects how many times this place comes up.

If simple knowlege of super reps was enough to shut down the whole thing than it would have happened years ago. Like many here I collect both gens and reps and my interest in reps has led to better understanding of brands and more gen purchases. Maybe they know that ultimately we buy gens as well? I would think the big brands would only really be interested in keeping reps from being sold as gens. Something we all hate to see.

I think we sometimes kid ourselves in thinking this place is hidden. Don't let green or professional AD salespeople allow you to think 'they' don't know we are here.

[cyberfox67]

Correct :-)

[sammalone]

hmmmmm.......should the bots be kept from searching rwg? it does come up high in the rankings on google.

[robertk]

It's a little late. Most Ad's and Collector's I know, know all about our forums. You would be surprised. The right question should be, "who doesn't know?".

[lanikai]

Agree 100 with Chicken M... robertk .. just need to let the noobs know "does and don't"..

[Agrippa]

Surely the genuine manufacturers and any other groups with an interest (in a manner of speaking) in the replica business have people who are members on this and most similar boards? For that not to be the case makes no sense at all really. If watchmaking was my business and my babies were being replicated left, right and center I would most certainly want to be in the know.

[Ronin]

a simple google search turns up a ton of RWG posts

This is not good. The site should block the bot crawls or add logic --> if the referring page is Google send them off to disney.com or something else.

On a similar note I was looking for gen pics of PAM 111's and searched google for PAM 111.... The first hit was pam111.c__ a know rep deal. Ranked #1.

[KB]

Surely the genuine manufacturers and any other groups with an interest (in a manner of speaking) in the replica business have people who are members on this and most similar boards? For that not to be the case makes no sense at all really. If watchmaking was my business and my babies were being replicated left, right and center I would most certainly want to be in the know.

Actually you would think this was the case but many gen sites give descriptions of canal street quality watches when they rate rep's, others have shown extreme concern when one of their members show the true quality of them.

Then there was the shock and awe when Biver realised the quality of the Hublot rep's.

It could simply be that everyone knows where we are but most choose not to come here.

Ken

[chronoluvvv]

I feel like our hobby is becoming more and more well known to the mainstream crowd. Recently, while speaking to a salesman at one of my regularly frequented ADs, I saw someone who obviously bought the rep from one of our dealers, showcasing it off to everyone to see. Granted it was a super rep (it was the concord c1), but this blatant disregard is alarming.

makes ya wanna use this on the offender's behind, don't it ?

[valerian]

makes ya wanna use this on the offender's behind, don't it ?

I'm absolutely with you guys and I even put on only gens at the moment as I live in Basel and streets are full of watch savvy people at the moment but you will have to excuse me on this: What in the lords name is this instrument? And how would it be used on the offenders behind?

Yours kindly

Valerian

[billywhiz]

Many years ago whilst working for an AD, the managers shop rule was that anyone came in flouting a rep, we had the copyright and makers respected rights to basically take the hammer to the watch and turn it into little pieces.

The question to arise from a lot of this ( and the makers know this ) is that the rep market feeds the gen market ok only by an additional percentage but even so it's still a form of aquiring business. How many people over the years for example have bought rep rolex products, enjoyed it so much that when finances allowed the bought the gen - without the rep they would never have been a customer. And hey the other thing to think about is all the free advertising, nothing better than the customer wanting you.....

Watchmakers concerns have been around for years, Rolex & Co. have been chasing people since before I was born and pretty much they know that for every CN factory they get closed, 2 or 3 will spring up, this is a gun business, the rewards far far outweigh the risks, there are some very rich controllers in CN the business and the question to ask ( and in todays environment ) is how much more further $$ should be pumped into factory chasing ? - For us it should be as simple as this, no matter what we decide to call the watches we purchase, basically ALL we ever buy is a Chinese made, built, designed, cut product built in illegal factories and put together by people working long hours on small pay.

However even through my eyes over the last few years, the quality of the out of the box products by the CN has jumped enormous, the fit, finish, is a thousand times better than even 2/3 years ago, are the watchmakers scared - hell if it was billywhiz swiss watch co. your damn right

To say i bought a rolex from Josh is like saying I got a coke bottle from the real Santa - It ain't gonna happen. You'll have a cheap, flawed, Chinese watch with references to a named product yes.

They are fully aware of who we are, what we are as the information from RWG is too easy to obtain, but we are small fry in the big picture which is why we are allowed to so blissfully carry on as trust me, if otherwise we would be outta here and not even a please or thank you.

Peace

[KB]

It's a dip stick for a car and as to how it could be used for the offender, I will that to your imagination.

Ken

[maxman]

I'm absolutely with you guys and I even put on only gens at the moment as I live in Basel and streets are full of watch savvy people at the moment but you will have to excuse me on this: What in the lords name is this instrument? And how would it be used on the offenders behind?

Yours kindly

Valerian

Well lets just put it this way my friend. It would not be a good thing to be a receipiant of such a device. Puts a hole new meaning to "Dip Stick" Mike

[valerian]

Well lets just put it this way my friend. It would not be a good thing to be a receipiant of such a device. Puts a hole new meaning to "Dip Stick" Mike

Errrrrr. OK. Unholy. Very unholy. I'm speechless. Sort of.

Thanks for clarifying.

Yours kindly

Valerian

[morlock]

This hobby should continue it's underground status.

Totally agree, we must keep under the radar with our beloved hobby, no big show off at the office, on the street and by no means at AD. As most of the member I am collector of gen too, but i doesn't keep me away from rep, and vise versa collecting reps doesn't mean I am not going to buy gen anymore. But rep are not quite legal, so we must do our best keeping low profile in high level rep. Lets the Brands fighting back with the POLEX and ONEGA out there.

This is not good. The site should block the bot crawls or add logic --> if the referring page is Google send them off to disney.com or something else.

I concord with RoninQ, I don't think it's a good idea been top in every Google search about watches, this is not a smart move for us.

Could the Admin let us know if this is possible ? Or if there is a reason not to do so.

[slickdick]

There is nothing wrong for RWG to be turning op on search results. RWG provices usefull information, and there is nothing wrong or illegal talking about replica watches. I bet 90% of the members landed on one of the fora through a google search.

Besides my personal opinion, I reckon it doesn't bother the admin because why else would T install an SEO modele? Certainly not to steer below radar. I think its a good move.

[_brian_]

Surely the genuine manufacturers and any other groups with an interest (in a manner of speaking) in the replica business have people who are members on this and most similar boards? For that not to be the case makes no sense at all really. If watchmaking was my business and my babies were being replicated left, right and center I would most certainly want to be in the know.

...sure there are agents who are working "undercover". Only LVHM (they own Zenith, Tag Heuer, Hublot, etc.) has over 300 agents and they put over 1000 people in jail because of reps last year (if it

[P4GTR]

Basically ALL we ever buy is a Chinese made, built, designed, cut product built in illegal factories and put together by people working long hours on small pay.

Yah.. So does WAL-MART. And, I won't shop there.

Balance things out, shop at Target.

[krpster]

There is nothing wrong for RWG to be turning op on search results. RWG provices usefull information, and there is nothing wrong or illegal talking about replica watches. I bet 90% of the members landed on one of the fora through a google search.

That's how I got here. On the upside, unless you are resigtered and logged in the hits don't show you anything. I think most won't bother to go through the process just to see the search results...unless of course they were looking for us.

[Bossart]

Ok I understand that the genuine watch manufacturers are up in arms against rep watches, but I sometimes have to ask myself - why?

Do they actually lose sales as a result of reps being sold?

I would think not as the guy who buys a $60-$200 replica Patek simply isn't normally going to be one of Pateks direct customers - is he?

At this price nobody seriously thinks they've bought the genuine article anyway - and any deception is so transparent as to be meaningless. I would think they should be tacitly pleased that the rep guys think enough of their watch to copy it - marketing & advertising the brand name on the cheap I'd say!

The employment in China manufacture of these watches is vast and without it these people would suffer much more as a result of shutdown.

To my mind the decline in genuine top maker sales is recent and much more the result of the western world's financial decline which fuels the perception that maybe these top watches really don't offer ANY vestige of value for money and they are maybe way overpriced these days.

Super technical kit has always had initial development costs - but after a while the prices come down and down - NOT so with these watches - they just go UP and UP. Surely profiteering?

As someone else said it's the middle range "top quality" watches like Rolex that could suffer in these circumstances, but the top 5% earners in the world will always be the true customer of the "super watch" manufacturer - always - and regardless of any recession. They don't have recession!

What these top makers are losing are the noobie rich, the wannabes and lets face it, with these BIG watches with bling etc etc this has been an added value market that they have gone after bigtime - BUT - it's not their true business - and ultimately it demeans their top products and their top customers. A top classic watch/timepiece repeat customer does not like to be aligned with some nobody who buys a Rolex - that's ultimately bad for business.

Maybe they should think on this before declaring all out war that they simply cannot win.

A guy, call him Pete knew little about watches but liked good quality design. He saw a Jaquet Droz Grande Seconde watch - it was a rep - not exactly like the real deal, but certainly had a good resemblance. He buys it because he is fascinated by it's design and look. He loved it so much he decided to learn all about that company and their products. Eventually he went to a pre-owned watch sale and made it his business to purchase that actual model - it cost $6200. He loved it so much and realised it was actually an investment.

Pete now has 9 classic watches, from Patek Phillipe, Jaquet Droz to Jaeger LeCoultre to Audemar Piguet - value somewhere around $180,000 - he keeps their papers, documentation and boxes in the same cabinet as his stocks and bonds, bank account details, investments etc.

Pete is a now a known repeat customer to some of the most prestigeous brands - he gets invitations for their newest launches etc.

Why? - because he bought a cheap classic replica watch.

[Guest carlsbadrolex]

This discussion is as old as the rep industry itself... As long as the marque name brands wish to create and market their expensive wares, people will be out there duplicating them for a fraction of the price.

We are not hidden behind some invisibility cloak, and of course all of the name brands know we are here. Not only are the manufacturers here, but some of the most well known collectors are here also.

I know of one collector who personally holds some of the rarest of rare Rolex watches in his collection (think $100k plus) and he is a registered member here. He is a great guy and rather fascinated by the rep world. He would never reveal himself to the populous and he would never do anything to harm the community. In fact, he claims to have found this forum when doing a google search for some research material. HE FOUND THE INFO HE NEEDED HERE, NOT ON ROLEXFOUM OR TZ.

[trailboss]

Oh, Rplex and co know we're here allright. They have proberley been members since the place opened. They come and browse, maybe have the odd chat via PM or even post every now and again. Nothing we can do about that.

/me: waves at Rolex guy

A lot of dealers in gens use these fora as a valuable resource. If you need to spot a fake you don't go to TZ do you? Unfortuanately some fool noob at RWI proved that just yesterday. After being roasted alive I doubt he'll do that again. If you need to know what's out there to fool you this is where you come and the gen crowd use the rep fora as a tool just like we do.

It is not cool however to wear a rep into an AD. It's just not good form and rather impolite IMO. Rubbing their noses in it is just plain stupid and does nothing but harm to our little hobby. There seems to be a plague of this type of behavior from folk ATM and it realy is capable of doing damage. Every AD scared silly upon seeing how good reps are geting is another who will go that extra mile to wipe them out. Why encourage these people by showing them just how good a DSSD or Ebel Disco realy is? The bad thing is that some of these new super reps do fool ADs at first. Then our proud but silly rep owner tells him "na, it's a rep!" How do you think the AD feels then? I know I'd be [censored].

Oke, if you leave a new super rep, say a BK sub or a Disco on your wrist chances are your gunna get away with it but it's still just plain rude. And if you don't, it's one more alarmed and angry AD. It just ain't worth it.

Col.