I'm about as green to watches as anyone, but having lived in Asia over the past three years I've seen a lot of fake watches. Knowing what we know about Chinese manufacturers of knock-offs its not surprising how abundant fake watches are in Asia - or internationally for the matter - but I'm curious about the back story on vintage watches - Omega or otherwise. I bought my first vintage Omega yesterday having gone in with the belief that buying vintage would provide some protection against counterfeits. Is there a similar abundance of vintage watches? When you find vintage watches in poor or less than pristine condition, is there is a relatively strong indication that the watch is genuine? Is there a history of fake watch production dating back to the original manufacturing date of some of these watches (in other words are there instances of vintage fake watches ie. watches that were produced as fakes 30 or 40 years ago?) This is quite open ended but can anyone share the back story - or a link to the back story - on vintage watches?
There were just as many fakes back then as there are today. Member gatorcpa posted this article from Popular Science's December 1971 issue: http://books.google.com/books?id=fQ...e&q=popular science counterfeit watch&f=false It came up in this thread: http://omegaforums.net/threads/help-needed-from-the-experts-value.1532/#post-16692
That link didn't work for me. I found the article here: http://books.google.com/books?id=fQ...ar+science+counterfeit+watch&output=html_text