Advancing technology faking tropical dials and faded bezels

[DiamondJack]

This was posted on the "Passion for Watches" forum on LinkedIn and raised an issue I have had my concerns over for a while in terms of the potential increased risks of buying faded bezels and tropical dials at a premium above what I would class as standard original vintage.

I have always had a slight issue with the substantial premium the market has added to such watches and whilst I admire the rarity of a true vintage tropical, if these can now be replicated (as apparently is now being thought they can due to increased numbers coming onto the market), then this may seriously start to impact on the premium being charged and may, indeed, revert the market back to "normal" original vintage as being the desirable pieces to own. Emperor's new clothes come to mind.....Comments?

This is the full article (unfortunately without the links which wouldn't copy through) as originally posted - so nothing to do with me or, indeed, my opinions. But inevitably, if the market's opinion starts to change.....so do the prices.... and usually very quickly.....


The following article is by no means meant to discourage you from buying vintage Rolex watches, damage the reputation of certain sellers or to doubt particular watches being for sale at this moment.

Recently, a number of Rolex enthusiasts and collectors started doubting the origin and authenticity of certain vintage Rolex watches that were listed for sale. If you are not at home in this material, you have to know that collectors of vintage Rolex timepieces love the so called tropical dials [those that faded to a brown color due to over exposure to the sun],patina hour markers and patina hands. Prices of Rolex watches that have these tropical dials (click here for a bizarre example that my friends over at Hodinkee found) or dials with a nice patina on them, are typically being listed for a much higher amount of money than the straight-forward vintage Rolex with a clean dial and hands.

So far, so good. When the patina dials or tropical dials are so much more collectible, more power to the seller. However, the quantity of patina dials becoming available on the collector’s market is amazing. Furthermore, some of the vintage Rolex watches being offered, are showing almost the same amount of wear and patina on dials and hands. Now, here is the sticky part. If you have a trick to speed up the process of fading hands, hour markers or even the entire dial (becoming the highly sought-after tropical dial), you are owner of the key to financial success.

Recently, a member of the Dutch Rolex forum pointed out a post on the Paneristi website, where someone was able to create an nice ‘fading’ effect on his Panerai dial and hands using an oven (click here to see for yourself). Besides using the kitchen for a one off, I suspect that there are chemicals available who will do the trick as well. Personally, I’ve seen new Rolex bezels disappear in a certain acid, coming out like grey faded Rolex bezels. I can imagine that something similar is available to create a ‘BNIB’ vintage dial (or even tropical) and hands as well.

Certainly food for thought when venturing into tropical dial or faded bezel territory, and especially so if you are paying a substantial premium over a perfect original for what is effectively a flaw. If you look at almost all other collector items, originality and as near to original condition is key. Deterioration, caused by whatever means, is seen to be a negative in terms of price.....but for some reason.... not in the watch world.......but for how long????. I'd be interested in your thoughts?

[dddrees]

It's too bad, but hey the thought of and the ability to make money will drive some people to do practically anything.

Buy the seller, buyer beware.

[alanski]

hi mate

its all down to handling these peices and the feel of them
when you have it in your hands and look under loupes and do your spot checks , the seasoned collector will know .

its like jed said in another post , you can only tell by handling as many pieces as possible
learning from experience , pictures help but nothing like the real thing in your hands .
going to the odd meet and seeing these pieces first hand with your own eyes .
having them on your won wrist and the conditions where you can actually view
and take time looking them over and speaking to their owners .

as for the bezels the artificially chemically faded ones will usually have a fade on the underside of the insert consistent with the top side , where as a naturally one on most accounts the underside is somewhat darker than the
top side , due to less exposure to the elements

its like the old saying goes , always trust who you buy from
just because its a cheap good deal doesnt always mean its good
buy the seller not the watch

do your due diligence with everything
the collecting world is a small one especially in the harder to get pieces

hope this helps a wee bit amnd others will chime in later on

have a great day mate



Al

[GeorgeK]

Big can of worms...
Good techs can fade one side only, both sides, only part of a surface. Technology can make about everything.

Reminds me a bit of the 1690 Porsche Carrera RS ever built... All 3000 of them have been athenticated.

[marcello pisani]

for me the work says nothing .. just a few b****ts and no "real" informations ....
anything you do on a dial leaves a "sign" .. even if yo heat the dial at low temperature in your oven or if you use flash lights to "age" the paint ....
do you think that the numbers in an insert or the letters in a dial do not change at all if you heat them ????

[DiamondJack]

Al

Thanks for your input and I understand where you're coming from....... but ultimately and there is no escaping this.......when you buy what is effectively a flawed item, whether this is because you feel it is more scarce and therefore in your opinion has greater rarity value compared to a perfect original, or just because you prefer the look of it, you are still taking a risk over buying the original.

That risk inevitably comes with increased pricing volatility not only due to general trends in vintage watch values which will effect all watches but, most importantly, also an increased risk due purely to perception or taste which can move far quicker than general trends.

As soon as the market looks to bother checking the underside of bezels, then the people painting the acid on to create the faded versions will just be more careful. I also can't believe someone like Bob Ridley (not that he would ever do so) but someone with his skill set, could not alter a dial to make it fade or change colour to a nice uniform brown with modern technology and materials. Even just the increase tropical dials we are seeing (and I accept many are water damaged etc), this will impact on prices.

Are we seeing a substantial increase in supply of perfect original dials. The answer is NO... for obvious reasons....but it's probably reasonably easy to take a discarded dial and change the colour.

As soon as this becomes a known phenomenon, and is potentially an issue, it will impact on prices. Unless you have dated photos or provenance with your tropical dial, you know the rest..................

It's surely hard enough checking if an original perfect specimen is the real thing without checking whether a flawed item, with which there is no original precedent to check them against, is a real flaw.

In my books, it's an increased risk I would prefer not to take.... but clearly Buyer Beware.....

[marcello pisani]

< nice uniform brown with modern technology and materials >???
please do some examples of these "miracle tools" ....

[DiamondJack]

Originally Posted by marcello pisani

< nice uniform brown with modern technology and materials >???
please do some examples of these "miracle tools" ....

Hi Marcello.

I have no examples to show and I am by no means an expert on this area..... just playing devil's advocate and raising the issue.

I would clearly always defer to your experience and knowledge on Rolex watches....no question there .

However, an artificially faded dial will not come with an announcement as such and surely there must therefore be a possibility that such dials have entered the market and fooled the experts...... as with virtually every other form of art or collectable. It would take a very brave person to state categorically, that there are no "artificially enhanced" watches out there in the hands of even the most careful and well advised collectors.

All the article is saying is that there is clearly a far greater incentive, given pricing variability compared to an original normal dial, to try to manufacture a tropical dial especially when I would imagine there are thousands of discarded non perfect dials out there in watch repairer's workshops.

[marcello pisani]

no problem Steve !
I was just pointing that from time to time there are people who tries to frighten collectors...
the same thing happened at the end of the 90s when I have begun to study and collect Comex watches .. there were already many fakes in the market and someone was giving
advices such as < you will see in a few years fakes impossible to find due to the laser and scanning technologies >
well , we have continued to study and work hard ( something I would suggest to all collectors ) and the result is now in 2011 we are able to discover a fake comex dial in a few seconds ,
as the technology can be very helpful to you too..
( a comex dial or a comex back is just an example .. the principle is good for all the parts of every sort of watches ) ...

[Frogman4me]

some comical relief. Crayola makes tropical colors now and it cleans up completely if you mess up.

[marcello pisani]

macro-pictures are a very strong ally for you :

( in my video the unreduced picture is two times bigger )

[DiamondJack]

Originally Posted by marcello pisani

no problem Steve !
I was just pointing that from time to time there are people who tries to frighten collectors...
the same thing happened at the end of the 90s when I have begun to study and collect Comex watches .. there were already many fakes in the market and someone was giving
advices such as < you will see in a few years fakes impossible to find due to the laser and scanning technologies >
well , we have continued to study and work hard ( something I would suggest to all collectors ) and the result is now in 2011 we are able to discover a fake comex dial in a few seconds ,
as the technology can be very helpful to you too..
( a comex dial or a comex back is just an example .. the principle is good for all the parts of every sort of watches ) ...

Fully understand Marcello and I also appreciate that a fake will be easily spotted by someone like you - thankfully .

I also understand that from time to time there will be people who perhaps have a vested interest in "rocking" the market, for whatever reason.

But with tropical dials, because we are not talking about fakes, just tampering with a "real" Rolex dial to create a more valuable item than an untampered dial, this must pose a greater risk to that sector of the market.

As with anything, as soon as the market prices something at a serious premium just because of a flaw, in this case one which has endless colour tones and variations and no original to judge it by, there must be an increased risk of experienced watch repairers trying to take advantage of the potential of those discarded dials lying in corners of their workshops.

To be honest, I don't know whether the technology exists or not...... but it must be a risk that it is possible somewhere as soon as the added value gets to the point it is worth the effort.

By comparison, I don't see the same risk with an original standard dial in perfect condition. But that's just me .

[JEC]

I'm familiar with many faux-vintage techniques (I used to haunt hommage forums a few years back). While they can fool the uninformed they are not that convincing to a seasoned collector. There are also techniques for crazing crystals, aging cases (involving clothes dryers and/or buckets of nails). Many techniques exist to recreate patina on dials, ranging from staining with tobacco smoke and coffee grinds (which can be wiped off with a damp cloth) to the easy-bake methods or exposure to a hot halogen lamp. I did it myself on one Panerai hommage I built. The end result looked old, but not vintage. The dial crazed in an odd way due to the heat (crackled texture), while the metal of the hands turned a mottled copper colour. The colours did darken to the right shade, but the texture left by the heat was a dead giveaway.

[arttay10]

I see where your coming from DJ, and your point is a valid one.

Of course - we all ask advice and guidence off some of the more experienced collectors when we get the chance to either personally or through the forum, to guide our purchases and help us make our minds up on invidual purchases..... WHY? ...... Because we lack the knowledge ourselves or basically are frightened of taking our own judgement, especially when large sums of money is involved.

You can't always have advice on tap though - and sometimes we are presented with situations where we look at something, Have a 70% idea what it is and if we think the asking price is cheap and we are 'getting a bargain,' then we use our own judgement.

Armed with knowledge that people are finding ways to age dials, bezels, hands etc... could save people whose pockets are'nt as deep as some, from making that mistake in thinking they have the 'genuine - real deal' - where as in fact they only are getting the 'genuine' that has been artifically aged..

[lhanddds]

Very interesting topic and one I have thought about from time to time. Don't get me wrong, I love patina and faded bezels, but some of these prized flaws (and that's exactly what they are) may be a little rediculous. To each his own but if the bottom ever falls out of the collector market, my guess is, it would start with these little questionable oddities. As we say, buy what you like and I agree with that. I recently purchased a faded bezel for a GMT and I intentionally picked one that had a variation to the fade (more fade on the periphery). I feel this would be harder to fake. My 2 cents anyway.

[marcello pisani]

Originally Posted by JEC

I'm familiar with many faux-vintage techniques (I used to haunt hommage forums a few years back). While they can fool the uninformed they are not that convincing to a seasoned collector. There are also techniques for crazing crystals, aging cases (involving clothes dryers and/or buckets of nails). Many techniques exist to recreate patina on dials, ranging from staining with tobacco smoke and coffee grinds (which can be wiped off with a damp cloth) to the easy-bake methods or exposure to a hot halogen lamp. I did it myself on one Panerai hommage I built. The end result looked old, but not vintage. The dial crazed in an odd way due to the heat (crackled texture), while the metal of the hands turned a mottled copper colour. The colours did darken to the right shade, but the texture left by the heat was a dead giveaway.

bravo !!

[Racer X]

I know some feel that they will always be able to tell a fake, but I can't help the thought that as prices continue to climb, so does the motivation for someone to invest time and money in perfectly faking one or more aspects of a vintage watch. Also, although people have identified many fakes by their shortcomings, can we say with absolute certainty that every watch that has been authenticated as being 100% genuine is in fact 100% genuine? In other words, once you decide a watch is fake, you feel confident because you caught the fake aspect. However, if you authenticate a watch as 100% genuine when it actually has something fake on it, you'd still feel the same confidence in your opinion.

[JEC]

There will always be fake vintage pieces and parts that are very convincing... It is not limited to tropical dials and ghost inserts. This is nothing new in the vintage market. Look on the VRF forums for their debates and trouble authenticating 6542 bezels. There are some incredibly accurate fakes out there that have fooled even the top experts, and some that still are under scrutiny without having been authenticated or proven as fake.

Stuff like that is the domain of the professional counterfeiter. If they get their hands on it, you will have a very hard time telling the difference - but the average doofus who tries to age something artificially will not get those kinds of results. Ovens and acids are amateur techniques that don't give the best results - the best techniques are virtually unknown because they are done by professional scammers in secret.

My point above is that with a keen eye and some backround knowledge you can usually spot the tells for most alterations done by amateurs looking to make a quick buck - but if a pro counterfeiter gets involved, all bets are off.

[arttay10]

Originally Posted by Racer X

I know some feel that they will always be able to tell a fake, but I can't help the thought that as prices continue to climb, so does the motivation for someone to invest time and money in perfectly faking one or more aspects of a vintage watch. Also, although people have identified many fakes by their shortcomings, can we say with absolute certainty that every watch that has been authenticated as being 100% genuine is in fact 100% genuine? In other words, once you decide a watch is fake, you feel confident because you caught the fake aspect. However, if you authenticate a watch as 100% genuine when it actually has something fake on it, you'd still feel the same confidence in your opinion.

I agree

[DiamondJack]

Originally Posted by Racer X

I know some feel that they will always be able to tell a fake, but I can't help the thought that as prices continue to climb, so does the motivation for someone to invest time and money in perfectly faking one or more aspects of a vintage watch. Also, although people have identified many fakes by their shortcomings, can we say with absolute certainty that every watch that has been authenticated as being 100% genuine is in fact 100% genuine? In other words, once you decide a watch is fake, you feel confident because you caught the fake aspect. However, if you authenticate a watch as 100% genuine when it actually has something fake on it, you'd still feel the same confidence in your opinion.

Agreed Dave. And remember that with tropicals or faded bezels, we are not even talking fakes. The dials are all original and are just altered in terms of their colour tone to add value. As the values rise comparitively, there must surely be greater incentive for people who have the expertise (and I am not talking about your average Joe using tea, coffee or bleach in their kitchen) but expert watch repairers to try to take advantage of market pricing abnormalities. Just throwing it out there.....

[Newportkrieger]

have often thought the sudden emergence of all these faded bezels selling for a premium was a bit suspicious. Notice no sellers warrant that the bezels have faded naturally over time or over night in "spa bath".

I guess it begs the question, is a faded bezel, no matter how, truly faded or does it have to be over time?

One also has to wonder how these bezels are come by, if you believe they are all natural fades; is somene going thru the trash at Rolex service centers every night?

[arttay10]

Originally Posted by Newportkrieger

is somene going thru the trash at Rolex service centers every night?

I'd become a bag lady for that job

[usbzoso]

Ovens are definitely the latest and greatest in advanced technology ... i mean damn

[Jason71]

I just don't believe there is a good aging process out there that will give the intended look and be as undetectable as you think. I have spoken to Bob Ridley about similar processes, and first........he would never do something like that, and second........he couldn't do something like that and it be undetectable.

JMHO

[marcello pisani]

what has not been noticed in this thread is :
1) there are a lot of informations avalaible
2) even more important : you are not alone !
the situation is far different from the end of the 90s : now if you have a doubt and what you have already seen in books/magazines/forums ....
is not enough for your purpose ....YOU CAN JUST ASK
are you not sure about the originality of a case or a brown dial ( LLLOOLL ) ??
just go on your favourite forums and ask....
still no answers ? send a damned mail ...
maybe fakers of all kinds ( including "faders" LLOOLLL ) will improve their skills..
but certainly we don't sleep ( to say the least ).....
this is why such works drive me crazy ... some people think ( how we say in Italy ) < that we still have ham or salami slices covering our eyes >

[cruvon]

Interesting topic and opinions. I see articles on how art galleries suddenly find that a vintage masterpiece in their collection is a fake using carbon dating et al and wonder how much time and money those professional scamsters must be spending making believable aged copies to fool the experts, for years at end atleast till some form of modern technology and/or new learning catches them out.
That being said, those paintings are worth in the hundreds to the millions. So guess the incentive is much higher faking paintings than artificially aging a vintage watch, where the difference in price between a original condition vintage and a naturally faded original vintage might not be that huge to risk artificially aging an original dial. I would think aging dials artificially would mostly be the work of amatuers and would be easily detected by experts but I could be wrong. If however as mentioned, the pros are involved, many collectors and experts might end up getting fooled till some really brilliant expert discovers is a fake, by which time it might be too late. I guess that's the risk we have to live with.
That being said, I would be more worried about original dials/parts being faked to look like originals though.
Btw has anyone used carbon dating on vintage watches economically and successfully?

[HL65]

I am terrified now and am thinking I should dump my tropicals quickly before the prices plunge thanks to the "Oven scammers"....Do you think mine is real or baked? I love flaws like this Steve!! I only wish I could find more as the few I have were next to impossible to find- especially in this condition. I do hear what you are saying on a serious note and think that there is a big difference between paint flaw turning dial perfect brown and a dial destroyed by elements(some of which are tropical and some just damaged). I also remember all the oven baked Patrizzi dials that used to come up and they all looked like garbage! So for me- nothing different than buying any vintage watch- Do your homework and know what you are buying and who you are buying from. You have more risk of being burned on more common references than tropicals as there are far less tropicals - at least true ones than more common examples- more watches for bad guys to monkey around with. Just my take....

[eparisini]

Originally Posted by marcello pisani

1) there are a lot of informations avalaible
2) even more important : you are not alone !
....YOU CAN JUST ASK

SAINTS WORDS (parole sante) as we says in Italy!

Friends like Marcello are for newbies the Holy Bible!

[DiamondJack]

I think you're right Ken and I was not making any particular statement.... just putting the thought and issue out there. But I have certainly seen a lot more so called tropicals for sale recently.

In relation to your own, you are clearly in a different league to most people on this forum, as is Marcello, and you both have the contacts and expertise, not too mention sufficiently deep pockets, to find true grails.

But I fear this trend towards flawed dials and bezels and the increased interest in this area is tempting people to try to emulate the lovely watches you own and end up buying over priced rubbish.

You have made it clear on many occasions that there is a huge difference between a true tropical and water damage or indeed faded or worn dials. But where are all these so called tropicals coming from? I just felt this was an interesting point and would help make people aware of the increased risks they take when buying anything that is effectively a flawed dial. After all, the original owners would have most probably complained about the change of colour at the time and Rolex most probably were forced to change dials at no cost. Hence the rarity factor now.

But it goes without question in my mind that collectors take an increased risk buying a flaw compared to an original perfect specimen. Part of that risk is just taste or perception which can change. Part of that risk is the potential for technology to advance to the position where it becomes possible to emulate such flaws. Certainly, pricing differential is getting to the level where there is serious money to be made.

Now clearly, I have no idea whether it is possible to do this and Marcello, who I have huge respect for, has said that in his opinion this is not yet possible.

But if it is, or becomes possible in x years time, where does that leave owners of such watches???

[HL65]

Steve- I hear you and also of course agree with my Italian cousin Marcello...
I think to me the bigger question is and has been why do so many sellers call dials that are clearly water damaged and nasty tropical?? Best advice I can give anyone is stay away! Buy what you know from who you know and avoid pitfalls that many collectors fall into. Again- the biggest danger to me lies in more common references as there are far more of them and I continue to see bad ones out there....HAGWE my friend !!