Identifying Fakes - Buying abroad

[graeme4130]

Hi all
I've recently been trying to help a friend source a Daytona from the US, and as I can't resist all things shiny, it's got me looking at foreign purchases of pre owned IWC's .

I've had a look through some of the more 'trusted' uk sources (ie watches.co.uk etc), but as a second watch, they#re out of my price range and buying from Europe seems to throw up some cheaper alternatives.
Could anyone, if poss, shed some light on how I can further investigate if these examples are genuine of possibly fakes and what I'd need to look for when buying effectively blind from these people ? ;

http://www.chrono24.com/en/iwc/gst--titanio-chrono...

http://www.chrono24.com/en/iwc/aquatimer-chrono--i...

http://www.chrono24.com/en/iwc/mark-xv-automatik--...

http://www.chrono24.com/en/iwc/iwc-fliegerchronogr...

Or for a smaller Chopard than my existing 42mm GT XL
;
http://www.uhrencenterberlin.de/product_info.php?i...

Also, this may sound silly, but would a European Sourced watch have the day / month display in a language other than English ?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

Cheers

Graeme

Edited by graeme4130 on Monday 5th March 06:59

[RichTT]

graeme4130 said:

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

I can honestly say that I've never seen a fake watch on Chrono24 so far. Just make sure to buy from the trusted sellers with a good history.

As far as day wheels are concerned, some I've seen have dual languages. So you would get english + whatever other language the wheel might be in. So the first IWC you've listed shows Tuesday (Martedi in Italian) but it might also have a second language on the wheel.

Also, don't forget into your calculations the cost of paying VAT once it comes into the country. For items of this value you will almost certainly get hit.

If you are really worried about fakes then you need to do what I did. Educate yourself on the fakes available (or not) for the watches you want to buy so that you know what tells there are.

[andy_s]

You should be OK for VAT within the EU, i.e. Italy/Spain etc.

I've not seen fake 'fakes', but I've seen a few older 'bitsa' watches there, but that's much older stuff.

Chroo24 is just the marketplace, but lots of bricks and morter companies deal via them. Just check out the seller, as always in these things.

[sneijder]

...... having the day wheel changed to English when the watch is being serviced isn't a huuuuuuuge outlay when it's in bits on a bench anyway.