On the old, ‘replica’ Rolexes that we could buy for 40 bucks in the mid 80s, the most immediate way to tell if it was fake was because the second hand would not sweep smoothly, it would click stop between the seconds. I noticed that the second hands on the fake Guccis of the day could do a smooth sweep without the stopping, just as the genuine Guccis could.
Question being: Why couldn’t the phony Rolexes get the smoothly sweeping second hand action going?
Thanks,
greatshakes
The inexpensive quartz movements were designed to have one second tick intervals. You can make fake cases and bracelets inexpensively all day long, designing a specilaized quartz movement is a much more expensive undertaking, and well beyond the capability of most people selling cheap copies so they had to make do with what was available at the time. Better fakes do have movements with the “sweep”.
As technical matter being a short interval “sweep” movement or not has nothing to do with the accuracy of the time keeping or the quality of the movement.
How sure are you that you actually observed fake Guccis at that time doing this? Not doubting your word, just trying to help.
Pretty sure; I found an old one of the horrible red and green striped ones in my junk collection, and tested it.
I can say with 100% certainty that these days there are cheap, $40 Rolex copies that have a nice, gradual sweep.
Rolex did also produce quartz watches until 2001 or so, so it is possible to find a conventional “ticking” Rolex. It will say “oysterquartz” instead of “oyster perpetual”.
Not fighting ignorance here - just passing along what I’ve observed.
The fakes were first made by taking a bunch of Timex battery quartz movements and surrounding them with fake cases. In response to the obvious jerk vs sweep secondhand movement the developers looked to using self winding timex movements which didn’t do the one second tick but had a small stutter movement more closely matching the Rolex sweep.
I’ve purchased both kinds in Mexico and have dissembled them to see what was in the guts.
And the quartz movement that ROLEX used was identical to the one used in the $20 TIMEX. ROLEX dumped the quartz line because mechanical movements (being more costly, less accurate, and requiring costly maintainence) were felt to be more prestigious (see Thorsten Veblen for an explanation of this reasoning).
I have a genuine Rolex oyster perpetual datejust and have concluded through eyeballing it until I am nearly blind that the sweeping hand actually does 6 ticks per second, rather than a true smooth movement like an old electric wall clock.
Rolex still makes quartz-movement watches, but I guess not the oysterquartz.
No it wasn’t. It was, however, identical to the movement used by a dozen or so other Swiss watchmakers.
See here.
I read the blurb about RPLEX’s high end “Oyster quartz” movment! Why on earth did they put 23 jewels into the thing? A quartz analogue movenemnt is basically a stepping motor, driven by a quartz oscillator. The only friction that happens is when the electrical signal pulss the second hand-that is why most quartz movements make do with two jewels. Twenty three is totally superfluous!
Even in a mechanical movement anything more than 17 is window dressing, according to a friend who used to be an automatic movement program director for ETA. I imagine they were just for bragging rights.
Synthetic gem (jewels) insets are used wherever you want a very low friction bearing surface that does not need lubrication. There are numerous bearing contact points in a more complex movement (chronograph alarm etc) be it mechanical or quartz.
Adding more jewels does not make the watch all that much more more accurate (it helps a bit) but it will (possibly) help it last longer although there is a point of diminishing returns.
See Jewel bearing
As others have mentioned, your cheap fakes were quartz crystal watches which have much cheaper/simpler mechanisms.
That said, when I was in Hong Kong in 2001, my friend there bought 3 different fake Rolex’s (for the equivalent of about 10 USD each at the time). I was amazed to see that they were exact replicas; including the mechanisms. We took one apart and I was impressed at how complex the mechanism was - presumably copied part-for-part from a real Rolex. It had jewels and everything, though I don’t know if/how they were different.
Quite a bit of assembly for $10. Made me wonder who’s assembling them.
Also makes you wonder about Rolex’s profit margin 
While their profit margin is probably in line with other luxury goods, it’s not quite as dramatic as all that.
Rolex dealers get the watches at about 50% of retail. They have to take the good with the bad. Some models fly off the shelf, some drag.
I would imagine that Rolex has a cost basis of perhaps 25% of the retail price(I’m just assuming this, I have no inside information). So, Rolex makes 100% on what they wholesale, the dealer makes 100% on what they sell. Not a huge markup compared to say ladies fashion dresses.
Trust me, we see Rolex fakes 3-5 times/week. I saw one today. Most are of the poor kind, that possibly used to cost $10 from the Far East. We’ve seen stuff that supposedly sells for $150 from the Far East. That one would scare you.
We’ve seen some Breitling fakes that would scare you also. They don’t wholesale for as little as $10, and the quality is such that they’re quite passable.