Interesting topic again Ron.

We've already seen a few, like Ray in Hong Kong who has been making replica Bundeswehrs for a good few years now. To his credit, those watches have sterile dials and aren't being passed off as Heuers. I think marking them with something else would be preferable though, as it only takes someone else down the line to add Heuer to the dial. I think they have issue numbers on the casebacks though, which is a bit naughty.

In most cases I don't like the word 'replica' for this sort of watch, it lends them a legitimacy they often don't deserve. I'll make an exception for the Ray watches as the dial is unmarked, but the majority of replicas are nothing more or less than counterfeits. And I think the market for those is an easier sell if they are aping a new watch rather than vintage. The sort of people who buy them are likely less informed than serious collectors, who aren't likely to be buying watches on Canal Street or down the pub anyway.

And with Heuer producing higher-end watches in the range now, most seem content with copying those - Caliper Grand Carrera fakes were on eBay within weeks of the watch being shown at Basel, for instance.

Who knows how long that will last though, and whether the fakers will remain content with the low-hanging fruit of that sort of buyer. I sometimes wonder whether, in pointing out redial and Franken errors, we're not also giving guidelines to the wrong sort of people. With values where they are now, perhaps the vintage Heuers are becoming more appealing to fake, though I suspect that pursuing the vintage market needs more organisation and perhaps shadier people becoming involved.