: The Viceroy has a slimmer case.. the Orange Boy, Siffert and 1563
: have much thicker cases, so it would be easy to spot. (along
: with serial no's.)
: Also, just to confuse things.. the early 1163s in 'Viceroy colours'
: (like so called 'Derek Bells') also have the thicker cases.

Stewart,

OK, so to make a perfect "Orange Boy" would not be quite as easy as Jeff said. However, for the amount of profit you could still cobble together an OB or even take an early SN Siffert and make it a Chronomatic.

We have a series of American Railroad Watches with about 30 variants. Some of the variants are slight differences in the placement of the engraving on the movement and some are major mechanical variations. The prices of these watches range from about $400 to a few of one variation which have sold for over $40,000. The difference is that the variations that matter on these watches are on the movements. All of the movement parts are serialized. What people have done is switch dials and cases from less expensive variants to make the scarce or rare ones seem perfect. It is greed that motivates this. The consequence is that it has become very difficult to tell what is original and what is not.

I just have a difficult time believing that there are not perfectly good looking Cal 11 and 12 Autavias out there which are not what they seem. Over on the Universal Geneve board Lou S has shown a picture of a UG Space Compax dial which seems to have been printed in Vietnam. As Lou says, it it was under a crystal you might not be able to tell. It is certainly good enough to fool a lot of fools.

http://omegaforums.net/threads/shockingly-good-redial.8575/

When the skilled labor is cheap and the profit is not there will be fakes.

JohnCote