These “tells” that give away knockoff merchandise

Factual Questions
21

When they have one and want to sell it to you. If you ask for a GMT Master II or a Daytona in stainless steel, they may say they’ve put you on the list, but unless you have a “spend history” with that dealer, your name won’t come up to the top of the list for a few years if ever. At the peak of the Rolex craze just post-covid, the stores would have exactly zero watches for sale for any customer other than their short list of high rollers.

Now that the Swiss watch market is deep into a correction, there are watches in the store, but a new buyer will get a lot of pressure to buy ‘undesirable’ models; small sizes, odd two-tone colors, weird dials.

Anyway back a little closer to the topic, the ticking thing was a tell because real Rolex watches have mechanical movements that, like most Swiss watches, tick at 4 hertz, or ticks per second. At a casual glance, that looks like a smooth sweep, but you really look carefully, you can see it starting and stopping. It’s actually hard to make a mechanical watch tick once per second. they call that ‘dead beat seconds’ and that’s a function found only on very expensive watches with especially esoteric movements.

So in the old days, a fake Rolex had a ticking second hand because the counterfeiters would just stick a cheap quartz movement in the case. In exactly the opposite story, where it’s hard to make a mechanical watch tick, it’s hard to make a quartz watch sweep, and at the counterfeit price point, no one would bother.

As folks have already pointed out in this thread, the gap between the best fakes and the real thing is getting vanishingly thin. The real nerds have a list of tells they don’t like to share, as the moment a particular telltale becomes public, the factory in China fixes it. The “reptime” folks on Reddit track these revision with numbers much like software updates because they make these changes several times per year.

22

Rolex have been moving to remove the wait list problem. It isn’t in their interests to have the mess that existed in the last couple of years continue. Dealers were known to do things like make it known that a Daytona would only pop up to buyers who were already invested in the brand. Which became code for - buy this other Rolex and we might get you the one you want as well. This damages the brand. Rolex were accused of manipulating prices and the market. They can’t allow this perception.
So Rolex is building new manufacturing capacity and is apparently talking about using a lottery for oversubscribed models to take the perception of corruption out of the game.

Veblen goods are always going to be difficult to manage. People want them to be expensive. Part of the point is that they are an expression of an ability to pay for such a thing. Which is going to be a reason why fakes never gain more than a limited amount of traction. Fakes don’t dilute the market for the real thing. But they do dilute the brand’s value.

The standard way to annoy a Rolex owner is to ask if it is real. This simple question already diminishes the brand. Wearing a niche brand that nobody other than a watch geek recognises isn’t going to elicit such questions, nor does it overtly advertise your income. Fakes of brands that nobody recognises have a very limited market.

I’m sure asking the owner of a high end handbag the same question has much the same effect.

Cartier have their occasional ceremony where they d

23

Not sure about designer products, but there are plenty of examples of knockoffs in other contexts where it seems like they include a deliberate mistake or difference from the actual branded product, and pre-emptive defence against trademark claims is really the only plausible explanation.

Like ‘Nckia’ phones, for example; they obviously want it to look like ‘Nokia’, without actually saying ‘Nokia’:

24

And ‘Sansumg’ memory cards:

(insert Homer Simpson MagnetBox meme here)

25

And Coby.

26

It’s sufficient explanation that the counterfeiters think that that’ll grant them legal protection. Or that they think that customers will think that that’ll grant them legal protection. Remember, people are idiots.

27

Oh absolutely. I see it with scammers too sometimes, where they say ‘remember, you are choosing which fee option you want to send’ or ‘We’re working with Microsoft’, as if this is going to protect them somehow.

28

Exactly. How many people still think that an undercover police officer must respond truthfully to the question “Are you a cop?”

29

Gucci bags usually have their trademark on it, and even if it’s an obvious knockoff the manufacturer isn’t supposed to use someone else’s trademark. Otherwise it renders the trademark worthless. From a practical standpoint, Gucci just can’t go after every manufacturer that produces knock offs. You can’t really trademark the concept of a purse, or even copyright it so far as I know, so there’s not much you can do about another manufacturer making something that looks like a Gucci if you squint hard enough.

30

Yeah, the whole point is that getting your counterfeit Rolex is supposed to be affordable, not perfect.

Not being 100% accurate if inspected by someone in the know isn’t the point. What is the point, is having a watch that will fool 98% of people into looking like a $10k watch for a small fraction of that.

31

Aren’t many counterfeits made in the very same factories using the same equipment (but maybe cheaper raw materials), by the same people, who make the original product?

They make Gucci throughout the shift, then instead of shutting down for the night they use crappier materials and a slightly different brand name at night.

32

I don’t think it’s a secret, but if you manufacture something in China someone at the factory is going to make knock offs. They might sell used molds to someone else instead of destroying them or the company itself might just run another shift and sell the stuff under a different brand.

33

Certainly that’s a thing that happens. It’s also fairly common in tech products where a some new-to-market gadget is counterfeited under moonlight in the factory that is tooled up for the first branded production run - sometimes it’s the whole device under a different/off brand, sometimes it’s just the outer shell being run off, to be stuffed with cheaper electronics.

34

On first read through this story sounded completely ridiculous - why would a salesman ever be fired for wearing a knock off watch? That’s ridiculous!

I missed that he was a Rolex salesman. Yeah, that actually does make some sense.

35

The story is bullshit but the easiest plot hole is that the boss was caught unaware.

36

That story begs the question, “What kind of watch (if any) does a Rolex salesman wear?” Seeing a mere salesperson wear a Rolex lessens the customer’s esteem for the product’s exclusivity. Wearing a rival brand would be even worse.

37

A leather band engraved with “I wish I could afford a Rolex”?

38

Or a rival brand engraved with “My other watch is a Rolex”

39

sure there is. there is something called a design patent (as opposed to your typical utility patent), that allows you to protect the non-functional design of products. There are tons of cases where a design patent holder successfully brings suit against someone making a product that looks like theirs, even when they use a different trademark on the product.

40

Overall I agree w your whole post. But with the snips I included above I think it’s an interesting exercise to substitute “DeBeers” and “diamonds” in the obvious spots & see how well your comments match with what they’re up to.

DeBeers very openly manipulates their market & is happy to tell you so. It’s a very different approach to managing a Veblen market.