I tried to buy a Rolex and fell into a grey market for luxe watches | Hacker News Reader

I tried to buy a Rolex and fell into a grey market for luxe watches

ft.com

42 pointsthrow0101c31 comments

This is an interesting luxury goods story wrapped in anecdotes so pretentious I would be mortified to publish them under my own name.

"It seemed like Rolex had spent millions marketing this $5,800 watch directly to us. So I popped down to my nearest authorised dealer to pick one up."

How on earth does someone so suggestible accumulate enough money to buy a Rolex in the first place?

This is a trivial amount of money to many people.

That's besides the point.

"...mortified to publish them under my own name."

Exactly, if I had the good fortune to afford a Rolex I'd never buy one. I'm always wary of those who do. In my mind ostentatiousness and pretentiousness implies trumped up ego and disingenuousness.

On the matter of the Rolex shortage: I'm not doubting its accuracy but wouldn't it make sense for the Wilsdorf Foundation to up the price until the grey market disappeared? If the Foundation puts sales profit to charity and the arts then this is one time when it seems worth milking rich suckers for all it can get.

This is some level above first world problems

I am sure his wife really wanted the Birkin Bag instead.

TIL Raspberry Pis and Rolexes have more in common than I realized, but only one can keep time.

Which one do you mean? They can both keep time, with various caveats.

I was thinking in terms of the lack of an RTC on the Pi.

Maybe somebody could design and build some sort of Rolex HAT.

The RTC could be provided by the Rolex. The Rolex could be synced with NTP and wound/powered by the Pi.

Having read all that, I would be embarrassed to own a Rolex.

As a Swiss, I dont understand the hype around Rolex especially outside the country. There are so many other incredible hand made Swiss watches to choose from.

This is like America having the term "Swiss cheese", which we actually call Emmentaler. Sorry to say but that one out of so many is the most boring cheese Switzerland makes...

https://archive.is/uuPZo

https://archive.today/uuPZo

A grey or black market in otherwise legal products is the result of a too-low retail price. This all gets solved if Rolex raises their prices to whatever the current, correct, market- clearing price is.

Same with concert tickets, for example. Scalping goes away with higher regular retail prices.

Doesn't this assume all the products are the same? Rolex continues to release new watches all the time and artificially limits the supply. So if they release a 2023 Explorer and 1.5x the MSRP, how does that kill the grey market for the Explorer from 2017?

I think his analysis also ignores demand and supply.

This guy writes like the pretentious fake foodie dude on The Menu.

Great movie compared to all else coming out of Hollywood.

I like a nice mechanical watch as much as the next guy, but this is just silly.

I never cease to be amazed at ostentatiousness. I cannot see how a Rolex has 58 times worth of improvement in its timekeeping ability over my $100 Seiko. And even if it did I cannot see how I could usefully use the extra precision.

Some people just have too much money to waste.

Afterthought: same goes for diamonds, they're far more valuable for industrial use than adorning some socialite's tiara.

The precision is probably worse, actually. You're paying for brand cachet, not good engineering. In any case, no mechanical watch will outperform a 1$ qwartz movement.

The story is complete pretentious garbage, no doubt. No one "deserves" to own a Rolex, good lord.

On the flip side, I see nothing wrong with enjoying luxury watches. Rolex make really great watches that will last a lifetime. And be built nicer, with better and more expensive materials and much more precision engineering than cheaper watches.

Yeah, it's not necessary at all, (I can just buy a new Casio FW91 every few years), but if you appreciate the fine details and engineering involved it can be worth it.

Right, there's nothing wrong with owning a luxury watch that's well engineered. I'm sure I'd buy one that's better than my Seiko if I had oodles of loot. But Rolex is so far above that point that owing one is a mark of pretentiousness.

Anyone have any experience with fake Rolexes?

What's the minimum spend for a decent ChiRolex, one that would look real (or at least not obviously phoney) from six feet away or so?

My $20 "Submariner" is plausible enough to look real to someone who isn't a watch person. The main tell is that the magnification lens and date font is smaller than on a real Rolex. The pearly doodad at 0 on the bezel is also a bit lower than it should be.

When the watch isn't being worn, the other signal that it's fake is that it has a transparent window on the back, which is fun to look at but I guess too gauche for Rolex to do with their real watches.

If you want to use it as a watch instead of a fashion accessory there's a few other downsides. Compared to a real Rolex the self winding is drastically worse, it'll stop ticking pretty quickly if you don't move it. Changing the date with the crown is also kinda janky and it probably wouldn't last 5 minutes if I tried to use it as an actual dive watch.

I think the higher quality reps are $100+

“ plausible enough to look real to someone who isn't a watch person”

Most non-watch people aren’t looking or noticing one’s watch enough to form an impression of it. The only way I’d identify a watch as possibly being a Rolex is if someone went out of their way to show it said ‘Rolex’ although then I’d assume it was fake due to the effort they’d just spent making me notice.

If the goal is to impress people, it’s not going to have an effect unless they’re a watch person or watch adjacent person.

Watches should be worn for personal enjoyment, not to impress those who change their opinion of others based on whether they have a Rolex or not.

Just buy Citizen.

Who doesn't care wouldn't care if you have fake Rolex or real Citizen.

Whose who care/knows would know what you have fake Rolex.

Paying $300+ for a fake which looks like a real one? Why?

Never had a real/fake Rolex, but my AU1065-58E were the point of conversation a couple of times.

Really good ones are somewhere between $300 to $500 depending on the model and the factories that made them. Also depends on how much the middle person skins off the top.

You mean replica watches? it depends ...

The worst of capitalist excess packaged in inside a story of “how I just want to show love to my wife”.

Could this be done with vehicles ?

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