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Old 10 May 2011, 03:41 PM   #30
Tmaca
Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2011
Location: Utah, USA
Posts: 30
About Fakes

I have a thing about fake stuff, I won't buy one, because I actually know of a small company where an individual, after several years of work and investment, invented and started producing something really innovative, then someone else bought a couple, sent them off to China to be copied and manufactured, and killed the sales of the originator by selling the stuff for a fraction of what the real thing went for. Because of that, I refuse to personally contribute to the market for fakes, watches, motorcycle accessories, jeans, CDs, software, and almost everything under the sun nowadays, by buying one.

But if the real maker of something doesn't care, and if they're large enough to have the resources to do it but don't sue, then they obviously don't, why should anyone get upset over someone else wearing a fake watch? The only reason I can come up with is that some people wear Rolexes, Breitlings, Cartiers, etc. more to show they have the bucks to buy one than they do because they appreciate the watch. With such folks, the very idea that someone who can only afford a couple hundred bucks for a watch is able to go around wearing what everyone is going to think is, say, a Rolex is terribly disturbing. It's cutting into their exclusivity.

I once bought a box full of watches, watch parts, and a few watchmaker tools for about $25, I mainly wanted to see what was in there. And I did find some interesting stuff, like a really old universal case back opener, some NOS Accutron parts, a Litronix LED (NOT LCD) (Litronix was also the source for most, if not all, of those red LED movements in other watch brands back in the day), and a few mechanical movements from the '40s and '50s. I also found a fake Rolex Oyster Perpetual Day Date. It had a dial that I think Rolex never used in a Day Date, so it would have been obvious to someone who knows Rolexes, had a quartz movement, and didn't weigh anything close to what a Day Date really would, but that would only be apparent if one really examined the watch.

Not only a fake, but a cheap fake. I'd just taken off my normal wear watch because the crystal was getting a bit too scratched up and it has a fairly hard to find crystal, the fake was nice looking, so I started wearing it. Wore it for about 5 months until I broke the bracelet chainsawing wood one day, then threw it in a drawer. Just now, about 6 months after that, I dug it out, and it's still within one second of being absolutely accurate.

If someone thinks some fake looks nice and it keeps good time, why not use it? Who cares, if the real maker doesn't? Yeah, I know some people wear fakes just to make people think they have the real thing, and those guys have even a bigger problem than people who get bent over them doing it. But it's their problem, not mine.
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