Counterfeit Watchers Discussion Forum

Fakes of some sorts have been around for a while. The concept of a watch being totally faked from scratch is fairly modern--mostly in the past 20 years.

But fake older watches exist and usually fall in one of the following categories. I'll use BNB for Big Name Brand to represent any top brand like ROLEX, OMEGA, etc. that would faked:

• A generic make watch doctored up with fake BNB markings. Most commonly, someone merely repainted the dial with a BNB logo. Though occasionally I've seen where a BNB markings were etched or stickered on the movement or inside, too. Usually there is no attempt to match a specific model of BNB--just to make something else look like it is part of the BNB brand.


• A generic make watch doctored up with some genuine BNB or look-alike parts added to it. Usually still not trying to exactly replicate a specific BNB model, but looking like it is part of the BNB brand.


• A *genuine* BNB watch doctored up with genuine BNB or lookalike parts to falsely resemble a rarer or more valuable BNB model. A prime example of this are fairly common 1960s OMEGA Seamaster 120 watches that someone replaces/repaints the dial and adds a diver's bezel to make them closely resemble the rare and much more valuable Seamaster 300 of the same time period.


• A *genuine* BNB watch that the movement broke and was replaced by a generic movement--because the replacement was not available, was too expensive or to cheat the customer. Sometimes a watchmaker would etch the BNB logo on the replacement movement or salvage the part of the original movement that had the logo or serial number on it and fit it on the replacement movement.


• Modern made fakes from scratch to resemble older collectible models.


• and finally--this you see mostly with ROLEX--fake 18K gold cases and bracelets with genuine ROLEX movements salvaged out of older stanless steel models.

That should give you some idea what to look out for in questionable vintage wtaches.