Counterfeit watch

A counterfeit watch is an illegal copy of an authentic watch. Many high-priced luxury brand-name watches such as Rolex, Cartier and Bvlgari are frequently counterfeited and illegally sold on city streets and the Internet.

According to estimates by the Swiss Customs Service, there are some 30 to 40 million counterfeit watches put into circulation each year. For example, the number and value of Customs’ seizures rose from CHF 400,000 and 18 seizures in 1995 to CHF 10,300,000 and 572 seizures in 2005. Counterfeit watch sales are estimated at $1 billion per year.

Forgery of watches became a serious problem in the eighteenth century when Britain came to rival France as the leading producer of quality clocks and watches. By the middle of the century, watchmakers in Augsburg (Germany) and in various small towns in French-speaking Switzerland were producing watches falsely signed with the names of well-known English makers such as George Graham and Eardley Norton. Other, less obvious, forgeries carried imaginary names with a vaguely English sound, such as 'Samson' or 'Simpton'. In the following century Breguet became a frequent target for forgers; at the same time British makers continued to suffer, many forgeries bearing the name 'M. J. Tobias' - a mistake for a real London maker named Michael Isaac Tobias. In the 1860s, when the American watch industry was gaining strength, the Swiss industry was responsible for many imitations of Waltham watches; these, unlike most of the earlier forgeries, often imitated the appearance of the genuine article quite closely as well as borrowing the names. This practice died out in the early 1870s, as the Swiss could not compete, so surrendered the mass-market field to U.S. firms and focused on branding high end status symbols.

Rolex counterfeits are illegally manufactured replicas of Rolex watches. Rolex watches have often been more susceptible to counterfeiting compared to other luxury watches, due their brand enjoying the highest worldwide awareness and ubiquity of their design trademarks (for instance, the Rolex Submariner has inspired plenty of imitations from both higher-end and lower-end legitimate watch makers). Counterfeit Rolex watches commonly retail anywhere from $5 to upwards of $1,000; the latter for high-end replicas with portions fabricated from solid karat gold (although most gold Rolex fakes utilize gold electroplating). Such watches are known by several nicknames such as Fauxlex. The fake Rolex trade has become segmented and the products marketed using glossy color brochures and catalogues containing counterfeited wares produced in China and offered for sale to retail vendors throughout Asia.

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Wikipedia