Phillips auction Speedmaster - a 3.000.000-fake?

I like my Omega watches all the more. I do not see this making parts and examples cheaper or more available for the common everyday stuff.

Given that I self service most of my watches. They have parts from what ever source I can get. I did a study back in the 1990s on Dial repainting. Which I am considering reviving again. I am actively looking for a case for the 351 movement which was assembled from random parts.

But these are my watches, which are for my own enjoyment.

Will make it a bit difficult If I ever to want to sell any of the pieces I tire of. As anything I might list would be suspect. Full disclosure on my part of course. But if I sell low, what is to prevent someone from flipping the watch? There is no real way to track the service history of anything. It will be up to the collector to be savvy about what is being offered. Most auctions have weasel words which begin with Caveat Emptor. Sometimes I think the film "Red Violin." is a documentary. This watch is no different than that fictional object. And I suspect there will be books and films about this situation as well. It is highly entertaining.

When I was studying with my late friends, and even people like George Daniels, Derick Pratt, and Phillipe du Four. Stressed the ability to make ANY part with any grade of finish. With the advent of computer machining, EDM, and CAD design. Most anything can be replicated. I bought a CNC and built an EDM. Even the CAD program used in the 1990s to design watches. Operating all this takes time and skill.

I have been checking my digital backups as I found the archival format I used is no longer supported by the current Mac OS. Some of these formats are even proprietary (A popular format called stuffit.) Mac files when moved to a Windows PC lose metadata. I had to write some scripts so I can see what is in the files and weather or not it is worth booting an old computer or running an emulator. At least the computer game people currently keep the old virtual machines running. But the data has to be in a form the machine can deal with. If the metadata is lost then the whole backup is just random bits.

But as usual I digress. I just wanted to note that a lot of this data is attempts of CAD drawings of old clocks watches and of course the Automatons built by the Jaquet Droz family. The time to spend programing in the virtual part is substantial.

This sort of skill does not seem to be all that rewarded. It is treated more as an expendable trade, than an art. Sure the talented (or lucky ones) that can really use this tech are well paid. But what happens when they become bored. Or want a challenge?

Currently 3D metal printing is still a bit rough especially for small parts. What happens when this gets combined with AI and becomes more practical. Note that simple 3D plastic printers are available in schools and libraries, Many kids know how to use them.

I think this sort of thing may become all the more of a risk.

Not that any of this is new. Paintings and sculpture have been forged (copied for years.) Look how every Vermeer painting is suspect.

I do not see why watches should be any different. Most of this is illusion anyway.

Well not later to the party than Hodinkee certainly?

No one reads that anymore do they 😕

I think there are good reasons for people close to this to allow time for information to come in and be filtered. There can be mitigating circumstances and enticement which are not obvious and not nice when there is probably a criminal element to any hot money.
On that basis I would say the Fratello article is damning in the details.
https://www.fratellowatches.com/the-3-3-million-speedmaster-ck2915-fraud-case/

It does grow the value of forums like OF and MWR. People are dismissive of curmudgeonly collectors groups but the truth will out when they get the bit between their teeth and harness a vast pool of (fairly) incorruptible and knowledgeable characters.

Having worked for an auction company in the weekends while in high school I have seen plenty 😁 A large auction company, biggest in the country at one point I believe, with plenty of scandals about selling stolen items, fake items etc. numerous times. They accepted them with no questions asked until they got caught for the 11th time, then things changed. Fast forward a couple of months or a year and it was repeated.

I remember a “funny” episode where a guy, regular seller, had come in with a lot of expensive designer lamps with the lamp cords all cut about a meter above the lamp. None had plugs. One asked why they looked like that and the guy from the auction house (who would receive a commission) just said that it was a completely normal way to take down your lamp and smiled 🙄 What an asshole. That day I lost almost all faith with auction houses.

Exactly. And the the stufit format is proprietary. Ironically there are some projects on github what attempt to reverse the format.

For some reason the disk image I was given has no headers or resource fork. Just 200 MB of high entropy randon bits. Someone named it with a .SIT suffix.
Most of the time when I dump the archive at least from the floppy disks it is often old Usnet traffic from the 1980s. Or copies of the old modem programs to read it.

I guess to keep this sort of on topic. Can one imagine what corporate archives must be like? Computers were in wide use after the 1970s. It is probably no wonder provinace is hard to target.

I have a large collection of Wurlitzer merry-go-round rolls. Probably collected by some brothers who opened an amusement park in Anaheim in the 1950s. They wanted the organ for the park from the local owner. Money no object. They got an Identical one from Canada. Then they got the rolls to play on it. When the instrument was quietly sold to a collector in the 1990s. The restorer restored it the way it was left the factory. The paper rolls from the 1950s and 1960s were left with the restorer as they were on 1950s butcher paper and not the green waxed 1920 paper. I now have these as I also collect and work with such musical instruments.

I sat down to index the player roll library mostly used for amusement parks and family entertainment taverns that were along the highways. Between 1915 or so and 1967 10s of thousands of titles were offered for sale. My spreadsheet has 10,000 line items and there are 4000 or more midi files on my computers. I was loaned some sales catalogs from the 1920s which I scanned in via OCR.

What is interesting is that when production ended in 1967. Others took up the slack. Catalogs were printed in the 1970s. The 1970s rolls used numbers which fit neatly into the gaps in the 1920s catalogs. Hand written production records have now been found. So the 1970s producers were creating the Rag and blue rolls (what the collectors wanted as it was the music of their childhood.) Creating history at the same time.

Well it could have existed.

The same thing is happening here. Stuff is being created now because kids then did not have the funds at the time.

I do not really see anything new happening here.

And if you really want a can of worms, try getting an Apple I or a Lisa. Most of the stuff sold has questionable provenance. Our company only sold three LIsa computers. And those when to Bart the rapid transit district. I had friends who owned Apple I computers. These were self assembled kits.

Yes, a very early Protos-type 😁