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Comment by cantrip | Hacker News Reader

If a high quality watch is made from the same materials, in the same conditions, with the same brand logo, what does the term fake even mean?

From the article:

"Historically, less than 5 percent of the watches that we authenticate are fake,” said Powell. “At one point this number was as high as 10 percent.” However, the numbers are growing."

Is it possible that the number of "fake" watches was always going up but that even experts can't tell the difference any more?

And lastly, is it legal for watch sellers re-sell fake watches themselves? If they do, what incentive does a watch seller have for telling you the watch you want to sell to them is authentic?

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A lot of the advantages of the "better" construction aren't seen until the watch is older. An acrylic glass vs saphire glass crystal on a watch both look the same when new. Over 10 years, they will look much different. Heat-treated blued steel watch hands supposedly rust much less compared to the chemically treated blued hands. I am not sure if this justifies the price difference of a $50 fake vs $5,000 Rolex.

I've never owned a watch for more than 5 years so none of this is personal experience! However the recent wave of smart watches made me look into watches now and I have a couple of nice dress watches I researched a bit before I purchased.

> I am not sure if this justifies the price difference of a $50 fake vs $5,000 Rolex.

I owned a five year old Rolex Submariner and had it for about three years. You could tell it was a solid, well built watch. However, after the first six months, I found it was not keeping very accurate time. Sent it back to Rolex and they fixed it and sent it back. Was fine for another six months, then it started again. Sent it back and was charged $300 for the repair. After another four months it started again and I finally gave up on it and sold it for a fraction of its worth.

This is pretty much par for the course on the high end stuff I've bought over my lifetime. High end (not pro stock) hockey stuff just falls apart and isn't durable. Soccer stuff? Same thing. Dress shoes, suits, clothing? Same thing. High end mountain bikes? Same thing. I had three high end mountain bikes (all different manufacturers) and the derailleurs needed adjustment constantly, the high end Magura hydraulic disc brakes squealed constantly and the Fox forks all leaked after a few months. I was a single track guy so its not like I was doing Red Bull contests either. I got a middle tier Cannondale and have had it since 2006 with little or no issues.

I found that after so many years of being disappointed with "high end" expensive stuff, your best bet is to not get the lowest cost thing or the most expensive, but the middle tier stuff I've always found to be not only durable, but far more dependable.

That sucks to hear. I guess this is also similar to high-end cars where they are more problematic than a trusty Toyota Corolla. I've love to own a Rolex Explorer or an Omega Seamaster one day but I am not sure I would ever buy one. I've been happy with Seikos and Casios. I daily wear a Seiko sarb033 on a black leather strap and it honestly as classy as I'd ever want out of watch. I really want to believe that branding isn't the only difference when comparing high-end watches but perhaps this is not the case.

The Rolex does have a better bracelet than the SARBs. I bet the chapter ring on your SARB033 has inconsistent spacing between its marks.

That's why I put mine on a snazzy leather strap ;-)

I wonder how low in the price range you have to get before you have visibly uneven chapter ring marks. I think I can print a perfect one on paper on the laser printer here at work. Although the ring on my sarb is not perfectly aligned.

My sarb035 has uneven marks. The minute marks are clearly made in a separate step from the subminute marks, but they're also inconsistently spaced between (different amounts of space left and right of the minute mark, but it's different for each minute too). It's almost like there's somebody manually turning a machine and eyeballing the angle. That might in fact be true... The same is true of every high-res picture of a sarb033 and 035 I've seen. I have a vague memory you can see chapter ring problems with some more expensive models, but it looks like the new 41mm Presage has a perfect chapter ring.

My rule at this point is to avoid Seiko chapter rings, unless it's a Grand Seiko or I can see it in-store.

I'd bet Casio has perfect chapter rings at every price.

I've never noticed an uneven chapter ring! You're going to make me obsessed with staring at my watches. I'm honestly staring at mine and it looks fine. I think I can now see some lines look closer to the minute slashes than others but I don't know if that's because I am looking so hard for unevenness or what. I'll pull out the jeweler's loupe and compare it to my other watches when I get home. I think the watch would work a bit better without a chapter ring at all or at least without the sub-minute hashes. The chapter ring adds sportiness to a watch that otherwise looks a bit dressy.

I found that after so many years of being disappointed with "high end" expensive stuff, your best bet is to not get the lowest cost thing or the most expensive, but the middle tier stuff

In the contrarian tradition of HN, I'm trying to think of a counter-example and can't. Cars? Toyota > Ferrari if you have to get to work every day (see also: Archer's 308GT that rides around on a flatbed truck). Musical instruments? More expensive wooden stringed instruments sound better because they're built more delicately (read: more hand work). You're not going to hurt a $300 violin. I own a BMW motorcycle now after thirty years of owning less expensive Hondas. Love the bike, but that BMW has been back for niggling warranty work a few times (and so has my wife's). Number of Hondas I've owned that ever saw a dealer after I rode off the lot: zero. Motorcycle riding suits? Klim is eye-wateringly expensive and no better than Aerostich AFAICT. I'll put my Garmin Fenix up against anything Rolex makes if we compare utility, price, and durability. Than there is a whole host of things like appliances where there just isn't a middle ground anymore, and the stuff on both ends sucks (the high end just costs more).

I dunno, maybe phones and computers are the only exception, and I'm not even willing to take a strong stand on that (how much better is a Pixel XL than a $50 no-name Android phone, really?).

> I dunno, maybe phones and computers are the only exception

I'd argue that the iphone and apple products in general are really the apotheosis of this. They are thoroughly mid-ranged mass-market products that are so well designed that there is almost no room for a 'luxury' segment.

I've found this same thing to be true with almost anything from clothes, to outdoor gear, to phones. The cheapest things usually wear out so fast you spend too much replacing them but there comes a point where spending more doesn't usually lead to any kind of increase in quality and you're probably just paying for a brand name.

I've been happy with pretty much every midrange purchase I make. I usually regret spending the money when I buy the most expensive thing and learned a while ago not to waste my money on the cheapest.

As far as cars, I know a guy with a Mercedes and it sounds like nothing but trouble. He can't work on it himself, only authorized dealers are allowed to work on it, parts are ridiculously expensive and in the end he uses it for the same thing I use my much less expensive car for, going to work and other random places we need to go. He does have a really nice stereo though...

There's some exceptions. Musical instruments really do get better as the price goes up. You can feel and hear the difference between a $500,$1000,$5000, and $10000 musical instrument. Most tools and equipment used by professionals tends to be that way too. But, I suppose as far as professional gear goes there's probably less of a 'luxury' or 'status' market for those things.

>the high end Magura hydraulic disc brakes squealed constantly

Pretty standard for the pads that are designed not to fade out on you under prolonged, heavy use. Sound is not a factor for race-performance gear.

You probably also found their performance pretty crap when they were cold. Performance pads on cars have similar characteristics.

> You probably also found their performance pretty crap when they were cold.

I did find this to be true.

We tried "baking" them several times at the shop. It did help some for a few days and then went back to squealing. I just put up with after a while.

When I finally switched over to SRAM I didn't get any more squealing.

There's a reason why $8-$10k bikes switched from the boutique brake brands to almost entirely SRAM or Shimano.

Yeah its crazy how far SRAM has come. I remember all the guys in our shop thought SRAM was a joke, who could compete with Shimano, right?

The rep all gave us full S9 (which I think now are the X line) setups and said, "Test it out, run into the ground. I'll be back in two months and see what you think."

Two months later, most of the shop was riding SRAM.

A fair caveat here is a lot of this will depend upon what field you're buying from. A lot of what you've said is true. There are plenty of others where a "luxury" name carries far more weight with regards to reliability and longevity as opposed to a no-name brand.

Like most things, different companies bring different things to the high end market. Companies bring different things to the high end bike market. So you can choose from lightest, best race team, flashiest, most durable, best service, best suspension, best design, etc. If you are lucky sometimes more than one. I recommend you take a trip to the most serious trail near you. I think you'll find the popularity of bikes that you actually see on the trail is unrelated to marketing, unrelated to what you see in the bike magazines, and unrelated to what you'd guess by visiting bike stores.

If at all possible I'd look at a more famous place like the popular trails around Tahoe, Downievilla, Moab, North Shore, etc.

For my last bike my wish list was: lifetime frame warranty, threaded (not pressed) bottom bracket, and boost. Other than that I just wanted the one that felt the best. Took me 3 demos of 2 hours each to finally decide.

If you are looking for most reliable I'd check the rentals. If the bike survives a season of rentals without a prohibitive amount of expensive maintenance and parts it will likely last you a life time.

I can assure you that fox forks can last over 5 years without maintenance, but the recommended maintenance schedule is somewhere around annual or 100 to 1000 hours of riding or so.

Current high end disc brakes from SRAM or Shimano can be squeal free under most conditions, which is one of the reasons a large fraction of the high end bikes have switched to them.

I have a collection of phony watches and some of them are spectacularly done.

> If a high quality watch is made from the same materials, in the same conditions, with the same brand logo, what does the term fake even mean?

That doesn't quite sound like it's the case here though. That's what happens with other products and after-hours, unofficial production runs though. In that case, there is no difference and the issue is really just a legal one. It sounds like these watches, while difficult to determine as fake, aren't quite the same quality as the real things.

Well, isn't it quite simple? The original watch was made and sold by the company which constructed and designed it. At a minimum, buying a fake is equivalent to buying software on the black market, afterall, the bits are the same...

But of course, the fakes usually are cheaper, because they are not as well made as the originals. That is ofte not visible by an outside inspection, but might contain different qualities of metal used, different production processes, less care of assembly. Have you seen how much know-how goes just into making the main spring of a Rolex? They invested a lot of R&D into it. Of course you can just use a standard spring. But it won't be the same quality.

If you don't appreciate that extra bit of quality in a Rolex (or any other comparable brand), then there are excellent original mechanical watches at basically any price point, starting at $ 100 up.

Finally, I don't think it is legal to sell or resell fake watches in many places, in some countries even owning them can be a felony. If you don't disclose that the watch is fake, it is clear fraud, and even if you do, it is still a misuse of copyrighted and trademarked material.

An iPhone knockoff will not function as well as an iPhone. Whether material used or engineering of components or assembly of the end product.

It’s not about simple, straightforward metals either, but very specific, proprietary, researched blends. Some watch brands use metals that make the watch incredibly light. Others, based on clients’ preference, make the watch very heavy.

Particluarly, in a high end watch, not only do you pay for the craftsmanship and artistic design, form and function, but also for accuracy (e.g. +/- seconds lost per day, how certain tilts and the effect of gravity on influencing loss in accuracy) and power reserve and level of complications all working together. No disruption from magnetism or other natural forces. A lot of refinement goes into a high end watch. A fake becomes pretty obvious.

You also have to appreciate the scale. All that mechanics. Went from grandfather clocks to pocket watches to wrist watches. Getting smaller, more complicated (day, date, moon phase, alarms, etc.) and days of “natural” power reserve.

It’s quite fascinating engineering in fact ....

I think the problem is these fakes are better than bad, but not good, quite. Swiss watch prices are partly inflated by hype, but the quality of many of those movements, and having been assembled by professionals, is worth quite a bit. Where a cosmetically good knockoff will have a less fabulous movement, and may or may not have been built by a skilled watchmaker. Selling them upfront as "homage" or "replica" watches seems fine to me, though. Presumably the incentive the jewelers and watch-sellers have to avoid participating in the fiction is loss of reputation. Once one buyer comes forward to say you sold them a fake, the floodgates would open.

If the two are completely indistinguishable, it means that the company is on the hook for warranty service.

Worse, it means that the company no longer controls its own distribution channels, pricing or exports.

If the company makes a mid-model change (bug fix, whatever), then it also can't stop shipments of the bad ones.

To corroborate the warranty issue: There's a temporary exhibit at Winterthur in Delaware [0] on the topic of counterfeits. They had a fake Birkin bag next to a genuine article, and apparently the fake had been through an official Hermes cleaning without detection.

[0] http://www.winterthur.org/treasuresontrial

> If a high quality watch is made from the same materials, in the same conditions, with the same brand logo, what does the term fake even mean?

It means made by an entity without authorization to produce that thing with that brand. Not authentic. It's operating without the historical reputation of the brand (company) behind it, which typically applies to things such as quality, customer service, resale value, etc.

If I buy an identical item (as close as possible) to a high priced luxury watch, made by a counterfeiter, are they going to provide me support for the item I bought? Do they stand behind the counterfeit? No. That's the consequence of it not being authentic, it doesn't come with any of the other substance behind it.

"Authorization" is not more of a factor in quality than materials and production. Authorization is a proxy for these things.

Not necessarily. 'Honest John's Genuine Rolexes and Used Cars' could well provide support and warranty for the watch they sold me. It may even be in Honest John's best interest to fix at least minor issues, to prevent me discovering I bought a fake. It's only Rolex who are not bound to provide any services.

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