I was just perusing through my local Craigslist and ran across this guy selling Breitling watches. His ad stated that he was selling them for $2300. He apparently had five of these to sell. Upon looking at down his post you could see he just snarfed pictures of Breitling watches from other online resources. Now ask yourself what are the odds that these watches are legit? Probably not very good.
How many people do you know of that own five Breitling watches and are selling them for half off through Craigslist? Now what he probably did was find a supplier for fake Breitling watches and he’s looking to take advantage of someone that doesn’t know how to tell the difference between a good fake and the real thing. That way he can make a huge profit very quickly. He can buy a good fake watch for under $200 or even under $100 and then resell it wrongly as the real thing and make a profit of $2000.
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The buyer will then find out that he has a fake when he goes to have any repair work done on it or if he tries to trade it in on another watch at a reputable dealer. He will be in for the shock of his life that he got taken with a fake watch through Craigs List. The simple answer here is that if you don’t know your watches or jewelry extremely well (as in you should either be a jeweler or a watch repair person or at least take one with you to look over the watch you want to buy) then you have no business buying expensive watches off of avenues that are rife with fakes like Craigslist. Buying an expensive watch off of Craigslist regardless of where you live is akin to buying one off of eBay.
Everybody knows that the majority of Rolex watches on eBay are fakes. Now there ae even fake lower rung watches like Seiko andBulova for sale on eBay and on craigslist. You have to be careful because there are two different types of fakes out there. There are poor quality fakes which are pretty easy to see and spot. Then there are also extremely good quality fakes that may take a watch expert to see the difference. Generally speaking, the highest quality fakes (also referred to as replicas) cost an average of $500.
Here is a close up of a fake Breitling watch.
The majority of people selling fakes out there are not selling these because they cost too much money and that greatly lowers their profits and returns. They tend to stick with the lower quality Japanese movement fakes. You can easily spot these are looking at the movement of the second hand. Go to a jewelry store and look at the original, non-fake, and you’ll see that it has a very smooth second hand. Then go to a discount store like Wal-Mart and look at the watches they have. The second hand will move the same on almost any quartz watch. If you see this same exact movement in an expensive watch that is a very good indication that you are looking at fake.
Another way to tell whether or not you’re looking at a fake is to take the band and look at it sideways. A lot of the cheaper fakes don’t even use solid stainless steel bands. They instead crib a stainless steel outer covering over a cheaper metal interior and you can see this in the side of the band. At any given time you can see several fake Seiko watches for sale on eBay with bands like this. Yet the seller will claim that they are authentic, but one look at the band tells you it is not and can’t be.
Seiko does not use fake stainless steel bands. Nor does Rolex, Bulova, Movado, Cartier, etc… So, next time you’re on craigslist and you see a good deal on an expensive watch it probably is too good to be true. If you must look at that watch be sure to bring someone that is very experienced in telling fakes from the real thing. My advice is to buy your watches from a reputable dealer instead because even if you were able to get one that’s not a fake, you don’t know the amount of care this watch has received and these things can be extremely expensive to fix and repair. So be warned and be wary of people selling expensive watches on Craigslist, Ebay and elsewhere.
I bought a fake Rolex submariner through Ebay for $97 with free shipping. I knew going into it that it was a fake, but it looked really good and I did not have the $4,000 to blow and get a real one. I bought it 5 years ago and it still works great. It keeps great time and no one can tell the difference! Everyone thinks I have a real Rolex submariner!
Very interesting article on replica watches and such. I bought a really loud and sparkly Rolex a year ago off Ebay and the gold started to wear off it in a few months. I was told it was authentic – yeah, authentically fake, maybe… Well, in this case the price was too good to be true – $295. Since when can you expect to buy a diamond studded gold Rolex presidential watch for that price? Never, a real one is $30,000! Live and learn.
Great story on fake watches. If you think they are bad here in the USA, you should try Europe or Asia. They are on virtually every corner in certain parts. You can buy good quality fake Rolex watches and other high end watches for $20 to $40 a piece and they will fool most anybody. I have a friend that sells fake watches and sunglasses and he makes over $100,000 per year on the side doing this. The money is good and I’ve been thinking about doing this myself. Are there any ethical considerations here that I should be worried about selling fake Rolex watches?
You are very right with this assumption here. I was looking for a nice watch and found some great deals on craigslist. But what I want to go and see the watches the deals weren’t as great anymore. That’s because they were all fakes. And I’m not talking about one or two here, all of them were fakes. There wasn’t a single Rolex or Tag Heuer watch that was real.
At least I have some knowledge into determining what is fake from what’s real as I’ve had a lot of experience with Rolex and Swiss watches, but if you don’t have that experience you shouldn’t be buying Rolex watches and other expensive watches on craigslist because you will get ripped off big time. Some of the fakes are better than others. Some are very easy to spot and all others will take a jeweler or watchairman to tell the difference. Don’t risk your money by buying a Rolex or similar watch on craigslist.
Very good tips and ideas here. I was about to meet someone to buy a nice Seiko watch and then I read this article. I ended up going to see the person and when I looked over the watch it looked good except for that the band was not right. You could see by looking at the side of it that it wasn’t pure stainless steel like it’s supposed to be. There was a crimped outer layer with a cheaper metal interior. No real Seiko watche is made this way – only fakes are. Thanks for the advice, else I may not have looked the watch over as well and bought a cheap fake.
Great article. You’re right, unfortunately there’s a lot of fake stuff being sold on Craigslist. I bought the Insanity workout DVD set through my Miami local Craigslist for $65 and it turned out they were bootlegged copies from China. I have since talked to several other people have bought the same videos and similar ones (like p90X, Zumba and others) and they all had the same issues that they were given bootlegged copies.
These bootlegged copies are cheaper and rarely do all the DVDs work. In mine only six out of the 13 DVDs actually worked. The others would just spin and nothing would come up on the TV. I also tried them on my computer and the same thing happened. I called the seller to try and get another one to exchange that worked and they wouldn’t return my phone calls. I finally had to list a warning on craigslist that this seller was selling bad bootlegged copies that don’t work. After a while he dropped off his sales and disappeared.
Since then I’ve not seen that seller back in under the same name, but, interestingly enough, I found a seller using the exact same phone number just a different name on there. Must be this idiot thinks that he can get away with just changing his name. So he’s back on there just under a different name. I called his number by using *67 to block my number on his caller ID (I had to do this because he would not accept my phone calls otherwise) and once he found out it was me he hung up on me. I have since reported him to the police and I have provided his information to Beach Body Fitness the owners of insanity and P90 X.
Beach body fitness told me they will send a cease and desist letter to this scumbag and that if he continues to keep selling these bootlegged copies they will sue him for everything he owns. So, if you’re going to use craigslist be careful and especially be careful when buying DVD sets as just about every single copy being sold on craigslist is a bootleg copy.
Hi, I bought a fake Rolex off of Craigslist and I want to sue the owners of Craigslist for fraud. Does anyone have any advice for me?
You are going to sue craig cause you’re an idiot? Sue your parents for leaving you in the car too long as a child and frying your already smallish brain.