Fake Daytona Sh*tstorm

Andy K · Feb 4, 2020

I've been following the unfolding drama over on TRF (thread here: https://www.rolexforums.com/showthread.php?t=722353)

And for anyone that doesn't feel like reading that massive and still-growing thread (52 pages and over 1,500 posts and counting in less than a week), there's a decent recap here: https://timeandtidewatches.com/horology-house-fake-rolex-daytona/

There are lots of lessons to be learned about due diligence, being a victim of hype, and so on. I think @funkright said it well in the Rolex shortage thread:

funkright
Given the massive Aussie fraud being detailed on various watch sites across the net I'm thinking it may be wise to bow out of the Rolex pool for a bit. One never knows what you're getting these days, unless it's coming directly from an AD and getting the next Rolex I want from an AD is looking like a more difficult mountain to climb daily. And I should not have to beg or cajole someone to take my money for a mass produced consumer good..

I wonder if this is just the tip of the iceberg and that a not-insignificant percentage of the ceramic Daytonas trading hands at nearly twice MSRP are indeed replicas. It all feels so gross and contributes to my waning interest in the hobby.

eugeneandresson · Feb 4, 2020

funkright said:
And I should not have to beg or cajole someone to take my money for a mass produced consumer good..

Exactly why I do not have any Rolex. I have not let this ruin my interest in the hobby, however, I have let this put me off certain collectors...especially those who use this BS as a business model. Its stupendous.

pseikotick · Feb 4, 2020

I have owned a few over the years and enjoyed them. But when the best fakes are almost impossible to distinguish, one begins to question exactly how important Rolex is in his life. Frankly, I feel the same about everything being made now given the quality (and obvious future) of 20, 50, 100 usd watches coming from China. I'll stick to vintage. Only.

As a boy growing up in the late 60s and 70s I collected baseball and football cards. My friends and I each had a shoebox or cigar box that held our collections of maybe a few hundred well-loved cards. We traded them, organized them, and sometimes just looked at them. If they were special they might get tacked to a bulletin board. If they were not our favorite players they often ended up on the spokes of our Schwinn Stingrays. (a krate if you were a rich kid) I still have those few hundred cards from my youth, but in the 80s and 90s when ball cards became a massive industry, what had been a cheap hobby for boys became a storm of new products being sold out outrageous prices and brand new cards that were immediately "collectible" even though every copy made was immediately enshrined in plastic and never touched, and every one would be MINT forever. The same collectible fever hit toys and many other things at the same time.

What had become overlooked was the simple joy of the items, and once they were being produced to be collected and kept perfect forever, they had lost their magic. I know it's not a perfect comparison, but I see what has happened with watches in much the same way. The old pieces have history and character from a time when they could not be and were not made by robots for a few bucks. They were sold at prices that reflected the cost of manufacturing, not the inflated price assigned to an instant "collectible." Things have changed.

miramogge · Feb 4, 2020

The whole situation makes me treasure my vintage pieces even more.

bazamu · Feb 4, 2020

At first I thought it was a four-digit Daytona and I was quite curious. While many people can (and should) blame the seller here, the buyer should have also done their homework a bit more. As the buyer said...$29K is a chunk of change and if the provenance (i.e. boutique / prior owner who purchased it) cannot be traced back to the AD for a brand new watch, that's a gigantic red flag. If I were to buy a modern Rolex (which I will not), I would only do it through an AD or through a dealer friend who can verify the chain of events with support.

321Only · Feb 4, 2020

ChicagoFrog
At first I thought it was a four-digit Daytona and I was quite curious. While many people can (and should) blame the seller here, the buyer should have also done their homework a bit more. As the buyer said...$29K is a chunk of change and if the provenance (i.e. boutique / prior owner who purchased it) cannot be traced back to the AD for a brand new watch, that's a gigantic red flag. If I were to buy a modern Rolex (which I will not), I would only do it through an AD or through a dealer friend who can verify the chain of events with support.

I agree. On the other hand I can understand that it must be very tempting to jump on that deal. Really scary story!

vbrad26 · Feb 4, 2020

Dang. That sucks.
Skimmed all the texts between the 2 and read the short version.
Pretty wild.

Andy K · Feb 4, 2020

miramogge
The whole situation makes me treasure my vintage pieces even more.

I get what you're saying, but depending on the watch the vintage market can be even more fraught and subject to hype.

miramogge · Feb 4, 2020

Andy K
I get what you're saying, but depending on the watch the vintage market can be even more fraught and subject to hype.

I hear you and completely agree. But what I was referring to in my own head are the pieces I bought long before the hype 😀

S.H. · Feb 4, 2020

vicsdca
The scary part here is that no one would have suspected the seller of selling fakes. He was pretty well-known in the watch community.

I hate to say this, but the watch collecting hobby is doomed. I can only imagine what the used market is going to be like 20 years from now... Rolex and Omega will have to create authentication centers everywhere in the world or something of the sort.

"Doomed" 🙄

And what about art collecting? there are fakes, and the market is still thriving. You just don't wire 29k over the Internet to a nobody without authenticating to goods, that's all. You have to do some homework yourself first, or pay a real professional with some kind of warranty.

Burr · Feb 4, 2020

vicsdca
The scary part here is that no one would have suspected the seller of selling fakes. He was pretty well-known in the watch community.

I hate to say this, but the watch collecting hobby is doomed. I can only imagine what the used market is going to be like 20 years from now... Rolex and Omega will have to create authentication centers everywhere in the world or something of the sort.

This whole situation sheds more light on how trustworthy are influencers really more so than issues with the watch collecting community. YouTube gave him more credibility than the watch community.

Larry S · Feb 4, 2020

Andy K
I've been following the unfolding drama over on TRF (thread here: https://www.rolexforums.com/showthread.php?t=722353)

And for anyone that doesn't feel like reading that massive and still-growing thread (52 pages and over 1,500 posts and counting in less than a week), there's a decent recap here: https://timeandtidewatches.com/horology-house-fake-rolex-daytona/

There are lots of lessons to be learned about due diligence, being a victim of hype, and so on. I think @funkright said it well in the Rolex shortage thread:

I wonder if this is just the tip of the iceberg and that a not-insignificant percentage of the ceramic Daytonas trading hands at nearly twice MSRP are indeed replicas. It all feels so gross and contributes to my waning interest in the hobby.

🙁 Rolex is just too frothy to buy into anymore for me. I’m glad I bought my watches before the current run up in values. Daytona has drifted off into deep space as far as I’m concerned. Rolex has done little to contain the hysteria with their availability strategy opening the door to better and better replicas and over list sales.

The moral of this tale and of similar tales I have been made aware of recently: Buy the seller, especially when the seller is apparently protected by and in good standing with the watch community, only gets you so far. Do your homework and protect yourself. Transparency, documentation and provenance are critical.

Don’t let this story pee in your Wheaties Andy! Its still fun. Watches are still cool.

JohnLy · Feb 4, 2020

Wouldn't it be nice if the watch manufacturers could somehow apply/inbed something on the actual watch that the crooks cannot replicate. If I were Rolex I would be all over this.

Larry S · Feb 4, 2020

JohnLy
Wouldn't it be nice if the watch manufacturers could somehow apply/inbed something on the actual watch that the crooks cannot replicate. If I were Rolex I would be all over this.

Rolex has tried. Its just easier than ever to copy designs and program machine tools.

Martin_F · Feb 4, 2020

Haven't read the whole original thread, just the article linked above, but here is what I took away from it (and maybe I misread some of it).

He ordered a Rolex that got lost in the mail. Nobody knows if that one would have been real, or if it ever was sent, correct?
Seems like the seller already used the money, so he couldn't refund it.
Maybe it was at that point that the seller realized he messed up and sent the "replica".
You would think a guy like that would have more cash laying around to cover something like this happening.

Not trying to defend the guy, but maybe it wasn't all bad intentions from the beginning. Even the story about helping family with the fires might have been real, but I guess at some point non of that matters anymore, because people aren't going to believe you anymore.

The whole thing makes me feel a lot better about buying my Speedmaster at the AD, even if I payed more for it.
I agree with statements above, that you need to do your homework beforehand and weigh the risks.
In hindsight a meeting in person, even though both guys would have been flying to a neutral location, would have made a lot of sense...

JohnLy · Feb 4, 2020

Larry S
Rolex has tried. Its just easier than ever to copy designs and program machine tools.

Hi Larry, I was thinking along the lines of a holograph, something that requires more than machine tools.

BlackTalon · Feb 4, 2020

Martin_F
Haven't read the whole original thread, just the article linked above, but here is what I took away from it (and maybe I misread some of it).

He ordered a Rolex that got lost in the mail. Nobody knows if that one would have been real, or if it ever was sent, correct?

If you read the log, there is no way the seller ever sent the watch.

JohnLy · Feb 4, 2020

Larry S
Rolex has tried. Its just easier than ever to copy designs and program machine tools.

I think Vacheron had put the serial number on the papers using some technology that was if not impossible at the very least very difficult to replicate. Just a thought...

scapa · Feb 4, 2020

JohnLy
I think Vacheron had put the serial number on the papers using some technology that was if not impossible at the very least very difficult to replicate. Just a thought...

And doesn't Breitling use a version of the digital passport? Seems link these would be harder to fake. Although in this case there seems to have been just a whole lot of wrong all the way down the line.

EDIT: Here it is:

Your Breitling watch or chronograph is guaranteed against any manufacturing defect for a two-year period. The warranty takes effect as of the date of purchase of the watch. The electronic international warranty card will be honored by official Breitling partners worldwide providing this card has been activated at the time of purchase by an authorized Breitling salesperson. When the international warranty has been activated, the following information appears on the card: Model name, reference, serial number, name of the retailer, activation date as well as the international warranty length.

JohnLy · Feb 4, 2020

scapa
And doesn't Breitling use a version of the digital passport? Seems link these would be harder to fake. Although in this case there seems to have been just a whole lot of wrong all the way down the line.

EDIT: Here it is:

Your Breitling watch or chronograph is guaranteed against any manufacturing defect for a two-year period. The warranty takes effect as of the date of purchase of the watch. The electronic international warranty card will be honored by official Breitling partners worldwide providing this card has been activated at the time of purchase by an authorized Breitling salesperson. When the international warranty has been activated, the following information appears on the card: Model name, reference, serial number, name of the retailer, activation date as well as the international warranty length.

At minimum it’s another hurdle the bad guys have to overcome.

Fake Daytona Sh*tstorm

Andy K

eugeneandresson

pseikotick

miramogge

bazamu

321Only

vbrad26

Andy K

miramogge

S.H.

Burr

Larry S

JohnLy

Larry S

Martin_F

JohnLy

BlackTalon

JohnLy

scapa

JohnLy

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