Fakey McFakeface

[Castrol for a knave]

I'm a noob to this whole watch thing, but surely any sane person will spot this as a fake.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Patek-Philippe-Patek-Ph...

Wonky lettering
Blue screws (never used in a Patek movement I believe)
Wonky bad English engraving
Use of "&co" and odd spaced :
Claims to be WW2, but an excuse for shonky work
Basic looking movement
Serial number on movement not inner case back (which does not equate to 1940's serial numbers) - ooddly, no photo of inner case back
and too cheap to be true.

Yet they're up to £418 with 3 days to go.

I need to get myself some Chinese Pateks and make a few quid.

[bigandclever]

You may be right, but &Co is period correct.

[The Moose]

Gromm said:

Yes, if you google super fakes that’s where things get scary.

Agreed!

[TeamD]

Hmmm, seems some folk disagree, up to £1500 £1650 quid now with 3 2.25 days left, it'll go much higher I suspect.

Edited by TeamD on Wednesday 14th October 09:11

[glazbagun]

Sold for three grand, brilliant!

No idea what kind of scam is going on there, but no way did someone pay £3k for that!

A sadder on for me, since it's being sold by a charity shop, was this fake Tag 6000-ish with a glass caseback and God knows what movement!

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Mens-TAG-HEUER-Chronome...

What's even weirder is that it's being sold for spares/repair, so you'd expect whoever pays >£100 for it to be after legit tag parts.

[Ikemi]

I'm not well versed in spotting vintage fakes, but it looks as though the 'gold' has been rubbed off the case in some areas. The other red flag is if that was supposed to be a gold watch, you'd expect the case back to be manufactured from gold too.

[DickyC]

Could buying a fake for a lot of money on a public auction be a money laundering route? Vendor and buyer in cahoots. Hidden in plain sight, that sort of malarkey.

[glazbagun]

DickyC said:

Could buying a fake for a lot of money on a public auction be a money laundering route? Vendor and buyer in cahoots. Hidden in plain sight, that sort of malarkey.

Perhaps. But one party would have sold a fake watch publicly and the other has, on record, bought an asset for multiples of its real value. And laundering a couple of hundred quid doesn't seem very efficient.

At least with a casino/strip club you can just say "yeah, we took in xyz from the public", it was a good month. Buying on ebay you'd have told them where the money came from.

[DickyC]

You're right. I'm useless at money laundering.

[bigandclever]

DickyC said:

You're right. I'm useless at money laundering.