The quality is obviously not the same, but most of these clone movements have been around for years and their overall success rate is extremely high. Very rare to see them fail or have issues.
I think it's disingenuous to call the reliable and more basic mass produced movements less reliable. Overall they are likely far more reliable, while luxury movements from AP, Patek, etc can be EXTREMELY fragile. Service on my A Lange costs 10,000 dollars... I dunno I dont fault anyone for saying "Whats the Dif" at this point.
@@chris8535I have been buying rep watches for over 14 years I don't wear all my ones daily. But they do last as they are ALL still running, yes depending on the movements as some are more fragile as they could be modded (like 7750). The irony is, is my gen Pam that stopped working after a few yrs which required a bit of service. Most reps you need to service just like gen. Sure it won't have the same movement finishing, but I'm not buying to fool people and sell them as gen. Also there are a lot of rep friendly watch smiths around the world and they do a fantastic job for the community is like modding cars but with a lot more passion as the rep community don't always have as much resources as the gen and a lot of time, effort and collaboration has forged. I belong to both gen and rep communities (I have been collecting for over 30 yrs), made more genuine friends in the rep.
@@chris853510 grand for your Lange? Did you drop it or cause major damage? If somehow no, is it the Lange 31 or the Perpetual Calendar Tourbillion? I’ve never heard of Lange service being that expensive unless something’s gone very wrong or you own a halo model.
We wouldn’t buy fakes if Patek allowed us to buy their watches. I have tried for 9 years to buy a Nautilus without success. The other day I finally decided to purchase a fake one. Patek has no respect for us.
You don't think they have a real watch that they reference? Clearly they don't want to make a perfect watch for cost reasons but also so that each new iteration fixes another small problem, such that people will buy the new one. It's a business model to be imperfect.
correct. Cant believe so many think the factories watch these videos to learn how to make them better. They can sell one watch once or keep selling new and improved models over and over and over again . What do you think is better for the factory . Plus if they did it perfectly the real companies would make sure they were shut down. @@ChitohYung
As someone who owns everything from Lange's to these -- most of what these reps show to me is that many many of these genuine are a huge rip off and mostly brands resting on the laurels. I've watched and visited Lange and seeing how they build makes their watches a work of art to me, hand made, hand crafted and it shows in their finished product. Try to find a Lange rep anywhere close to the real thing -- you can't because it's a genuinely hard watch to make. Watching a machine build a Rolex and sell it to you for 15k, while a handmade one in china goes for 700 and is 99% the same -- it really speaks for itself.
@@alex5471 Do you know anything about what you're saying? Rolexes are machine made -- this is clearly documented and shown. Literally nothing except some token hand polishing is done by hand. Buddy learn about what you are talking about before declaring it wrong. Fakes are often more handmade at a much smaller scale.
@@alex5471 Rolexes are machine made and maybe hand polished a bit -- this is widely known. They may be hand inspected or 'assembled' but thats a joke. A Lang is handmade as in the parts are hand made. Fakes are often hand assembled and made as thats cheaper than machine made and done in smaller quantities. Feel like you dont really know what you are talking about here.
You are agreeing that Rolexes are assembled by hand and polished by hand. You’re blatantly contradicting yourself here 💀 Genuinely got a good chuckle from your comment. That fact that you think that Chinese fakes are more hand-crafted than real Rolexes shows me there’s no further need to pursue this conversation 💀 Enjoy your Lange with a case that isn’t made in house 👍
@@alex5471 Come on are you being deliberately obtuse. Handmade = all parts made in house, hand assembled means parts are put together in the last stage. This can mean as little as placing the movement in the case and closing it up. Which it does in rolexes case. Do you own this garbage or something and have your identity wound up in it? Again, your information is incorrect while you argue foolishly.
One big drawback of wearing gens is service cost, my Navitimer is going in soon and it will be around 900 euro.. You could buy 2-3 reps for that. So yeah reps might not last a lifetime but so wont gens unless serviced for a lot. Just pointing out that little fact.
It would cost more to service a real watch than just buy another one. Say a clone cost $1,000 and the real one costs $45,000. You can get 45 brand new watches over the years and never get bored and have a perfectly running watch. The service alone on a Patek would cost more than a fake one.
if you can afford a genuine Patek, u can def afford the servicing cost.... if you can't and you bought one well that's on you on making a poor financial decision.
@@dainluke well the market always speaks for itself - at the time my father was young, these went for about 4k dollars, which equates for about 18k dollars in todays currency. Now you can't find one for less then 60k dollars. That is an insane price tag rise, while there wasn't a very significant change on these references. Had they stayed lower MRSP, there wouldn't be such a rush for multi thousand dollar fakes.
@@jani0077 That may be true, but that doesn’t validate fake watches. They’re not Patek watches, they don’t represent the experience of owning a Patek, and the industry that creates fake watches is an illegal industry that likely also deals in other trades. I don’t believe these are made in sweat shops, but the people who own rep factories are definitely not your average entrepreneurs. There are so many worthy options at cheaper price tags.
Great video. As someone that doesnt even have the same clothes for a few months or car for more then a year or 2. Im kind of leaning towards the cheaper option. I dont know much people that even keep a watch that long. Let alone love the design long enough to even care. I dont even keep my phone a year before I replace it. You have to be honest to yourself. Does it even matter if its fake or real. The wait list alone is crazy. Some of these watches take years before you can purchase them from an ad. Atleast, with a 99 percent fake I could littering change my watch as much as clothes. Not care if I damage or loose it. And in these times no one really cares if its real or fake. Almost everything we buy is made from the same place these fake watches come from. Its laughable.
Good stuff as always. I suppose that as watches have moved more from a means of telling the time accurately to a piece of status jewellery, this type of counterfeiting was inevitable. Obviously there are different grades of fakes, for different markets. The £50 "Bolex" customers are never going to want to pay for a AAA fake, or the real thing, so they won't care about finishing or function beyond the superficial. The issue is when the customer doesn't know they're buying a non-genuine piece. All of which is to say: yes, more of these fake-spotting vids please.
I am not a watchmaker but it seems to me like the instillation and design of a "free-sprung balance" is significantly easier if you simply add some weights to a balance wheel and subtract a curb regulator. Given that this watch is off by like 3 minutes a day do we know if this is the case? Did you check if this watch is able to be regulated with the system currently installed? If so we then have a further question of how fine the regulation is able to be achieved. Can you get the uncased movement running +/-10s/day, +/-1min/day,chronomoter spec? From an outsider perspective it looks like all they have managed to do is remove a feature of the watch in the name of aesthetics. If this is the case the first authentication check for a 5711 should be the timegrapher!
Thank you for this, it's very insightful for us regular people. Its scary that fake watches are improving like crazy its basically impossible to tell these days if you dont look closely.
Although i agree with 100% of what you say you can get lucky. I have a fake yachtmaster running fine since 2010. And i have a genuine sub from 2013 which i had to service already 2 times since it broke down on me.
@@offroadfreak8582 You should take it to the AD (if it’s not a massive inconvenience). I took my Tudor BB58 to an AD because of a winding efficiency issue. I thought they’d be dicks about it but it was actually handled really smoothly and Rolex didn’t even try to pin it on me.
If you can’t tell the differences at first glance, then you just don’t have an eye for detail. That’s not to say there’s something wrong with you, but there is a difference in quality.
@@dainlukeI can’t attest to the quality difference. I have a 5726/1a rep and know the flaws after researching it so much. Was at an AP AD last week and the sales guy was floored of the quality; probably because he’s not as familiar with Pateks. All in all, most people truly do not care or would think any different if a watch is “fake” or not. I always tell people what it is if they ask/notice/comment on it. Always makes for fun conversation
@@drc2748 To be totally honest, most humans in general do not have an eye for detail and aren’t able to appreciate subtle markers of quality. From the winding, to the screw threads, to the accuracy, to the finishing.
this holds true, the less complications in a watch, the easier it is to replicate, hence why the movement is always the telltale in any "case", hence why Sub no date or any with date for that matter will easily sell, its when one gets to the calenders and etc, then it becomes hard and harder, but as they say, where there is a will, there is a way, so no doubt there will be replicas that cost 10k or more as their cases are CNC milled from solid gold and etc, even the micro rotor has been rep from what I hear in solid gold too
Maybe if the common of the mortals actually had a chance to buy these watches without having to pay 3,4 10 times its price, less people would go for fake watches.. fortunately there are still brands we can buy from the authorised dealers
That's the product of black polishing. With the naked eye it appears black but under the microscope you'll see some fine lines created by the diamond paste usually up to 50,000-100,000 grit. Polishing a round object is very easy. Polishing a flat one...
Not sure if you only cover replicas if they're brought to you rather than purchasing them yourself but if do then I suggest you get one of the high end replicas of the Aqua Terra World Timer, it's mind blowing and they even made the Ceramic/Titanium variants.
Who are building these super fakes and where can you buy them? I don't have a Nautilus, but I can see use for a copy of some of the ones I own. For example going to a nightclub or through a bad neighborhood 🤷♀️
Have had my “fake” Nautilus for 4 months- so happy- 450 Canadian $$$’s. Wish that I could have bought my Bentley Continental Convertible and my G63 as fakes😬😬. Could have saved myself a couple of hundred thousand dollars !!
Good video and Thanks.....Please could you review a 'TOP AAA' Clone replica ( Cost about $3500 ) and see if you can spot the difference? The replica you reviewed is NOT a top replica. Thanks
Its a modified 3KF base, yes. Looks like a buff dial and hands, and additional movement mods to get the free spring balance and engravings. If a stock 3KF runs around 600 USD, this would be towards the 2-3K range
@@Plamen2007kickass. i have a hard time believing the inaccuracy shown in the video though. I have shitters keeping +/- 7s and he's trying to claim a $3k custom cloned movement is inaccurate lol
I've seen $10,000+ fake 5711's sell second hand. Gen crystals, crowns, date wheels, hands, 3rd party dial, free sprung balance, gen rotor, correct thickness, before you take it fully apart and know what you're looking for it would fool anyone.
naming brands with ETA or modified ETA movements at the end... bro... come on, fakes use the ETA as well for a bit more. Hell pams, bell and rosses etc - they'll even match the WR. There's a point where functionally its the same watch i'm afraid. if someone has to open upa fake to tell the difference, or get a loop.... and the dude with the fake saved 99k... i'm not sure the dude who bought the 100k watch made the right call...
People seems to miss the most important part of owning a genuine Rolex, Patek or whatever brand it might be. It’s like buying a Ferrari or similar car, it’s not to take you from A to B, it’s the feeling of owning something special. If I just needed to know the time, I buy a Casio 😊 Fakes might look the same, but it’s like building your own Ferrari, it’s not a Ferrari, no matter how much it looks like it😉
I can not comprehend why you would buy fake, if you can't pay what they are asking don't try to replicate the look. people crying about it being a rip off seems like they have been born yesterday night, we all know you pay for the brand.
I will always buy a fake watch for these reasons: - People selling fake watches are nice - Fake watches are aways in stock - For $700 its 99.9% matching. - I rather get rob with a fake watch - No body know nor care or even confirm if its real or fake. - the video at 1:00, you can see the "real" watch is all scratched up while the fake one is not due to the better steel and quality they use. But before for you run out and buy a watch.....just know it's your money. Spend your money on companies that cares about you. Dont let this jackass fool you with his fake info. The more money you dump on fake watch's the better the copy will be. Everything he said about the real watches can be copy.....its nothing special just like the company you work for will run without you. It used to be that a fake Rolex was 60% accurate copied but today its 99.9% next to the real thing. I am willing to be it will be 100% of the copy in the future.
I love how confidently incorrect people can be. They are both 316 steel and assuming no one would contribute a brand new watch for a video comparison, they borrow a watch that was regularly worn.
@@juxtaplay Thats because they can't afford to buy a new bullshit "real" watch for their comparison. Yet they want you to dump a ton of money on buying into marketing "real" shit. If you understand productions, then you know it's all marketing bullshit. If they can make a copy of a Rolex 99.9% for $700.......then how can the real one be hundreds of thousands more?
So then why not just buy an homage? Why do you require the dial to read a brand name that is false. At least when you buy a Cronos, you’re buying a Cronos. Also, the differences in sheer cleanliness between a rep and a gen is huge. I don’t know what you’re talking about when you say they’re 99% there or whatever. At what point do they decide to start not using rusty components and not having damaged screws in movements, and not having hairs and debris everywhere? I have a soft spot for Chinese manufacturing because I can imagine that living in a country like China is quite tough. For that reason, I will always support homage brands, as much as other refer to them as knock-offs and whatever else. These fake watches are just trash though. They don’t make sense, and there are superior options.
@@Kr0nicridah Most people think that only the ultra rich would ever buy a watch worth more than a few thousand dollars, so unless one is ultra rich, most people will assume rep. At least when one knows it’s genuine, they can brush that aside. When they know it’s a rep too, it just makes everything way more awkward.
