How to spot a fake Rolex watch in 2023

people say that there are more fake rolexes in the world than real ones which is kind of mind-blowing but it's also kind of scary so today i'm going to show you six ways to help you identify the real ones and keep you safe like some sort of public service announcement or maybe like a horological superhero welcome back to jack i am adrian and i've been into watches for a while kind of seriously into watches for about eight years or so and in that time i've managed to buy and sell a handful of rolexes and it's scary it's scary because there's a lot of scams out there and because there's a lot of fakes out there both scams and fakes they're major topics to talk about but today i'm just gonna be focusing on fake watches if you're interested in scams then hit subscribe down there because i will be dropping another video on that stuff later on but today i'm going to show you six ways to help you identify a fake watch if you're watching this video then you're probably looking for a way of saving yourself a bit of money on your next watch purchase and luckily this video is sponsored by cronex they've given me a discount code to share with you and it's going to save you money now before i take you through these six points i want to highlight how tricky this stuff is and kind of how good or how deceiving mid-tier fake watches are so i'm going to show you some footage and some photographs i want you to see if you can figure out which one is fake which one is real [Music] how did you get up did you get them all right no i i doubt you got more right because it is tricky and it's tricky for two main reasons one because fake watches are getting really very good and this isn't even a good fake watch this is a mid-tier fake watch this costs 600 and you can get fake watches costing over a thousand dollars which is just stupid because you can get brilliant watches for that kind of money the benefit of me showing you a mid-tier watch is that this is the most common kind of fake that you would come across the second reason why it's so difficult to identify between a fake and a real rolex is that relics aren't actually that great at their finishes there are misaligned parts there are badly finished areas both on the case and on tiny details like the hands so let's get into the six points and these six points are pretty much all around little details that rolex have added to their watches to make it hard for them to be counterfeited and these details are where the fake rolexes really stand out the first one's an easy one it's a serial number every single rolex has a unique serial number and before 2010 you could actually use a serial number to date the watch but after 2010 they used a random collection of numbers and you can no longer date the watch by that so if you have the serial number of the watch just type it into google put quotation marks on either side because that's your command and google to search just for that exact item and if it comes up with lots of results then it is fake fun fact between 1987 and 1990 rolex actually used the name rolex as part of their serial number sequence of course missing out the o because o is similar to zero and that would have just been confusing the next point is the cyclops or the date window this is there to magnify the tiny date disc behind so that it's more legible a real submariner magnifies that tiny date number by 2.5 times the cyclops is a really hard thing for these fake factories to get right not just because of magnification but also the clarity of the number behind a real rolex won't have a massively skewed distorted number it'll be relatively clear also rolex uses anti-reflective material under the cyclops to make it easier to read but this anti-reflective material is clear this is obviously harder for people to find and so fake watches often have little tint in the cyclops this one is blue and the blue is a massive giveaway now with the next point we're going to start to get a bit geeky because it requires quite a bit of attention to detail and quite a bit of time to kind of dissect this part and it's the laser etched crown down at six o'clock real rolex's have a tiny laser-etched crown on the sapphire crystal down at six o'clock it is incredibly hard to see with the naked eye but you can just about make it out if you angle the watch in a certain way it's easier to see if you've got a loop or a macro lens on a camera rolex don't just laser etch the crown logo at six o'clock they do it with tiny dots at different heights different depths within the sapphire crystal and so it's not just one continuous line creating the logo this is one of the biggest places where fake watches are identified as being fake because it's such a hard process to be replicated a lot of fake watches over accentuate the crown down at six o'clock to make it stand out on the real watches it's very very difficult to see just get out a loop and or a macro lens or something that allows you to magnify it and see if it has these dots in different depths another little fun fact if the logo has an s inside of it it just means that the glass has been swapped during a service but it's legit it's just stating that this is a service part as opposed to the original part that came with the watch now we're going to look at the rehort this is kind of like the inner ring that connects the dial to the glass or the bezel and it has rolex relex rolex written all the way around and it's engraved or it's now laser etched at 12 o'clock we have the rolex logo the crown and then at six o'clock we have the serial number this is a tricky area to look at because the process has changed over the years but there are two major things to look at one how the text is executed rolex laser engraves this stuff it is exact it's so precise and it is super super clean everything is super sharp and it's without doubt perfectly executed another thing to look out for is on the right hand side of the dial so one o'clock down to five o'clock the x of rolex is going to line up with the hour markers on the left hand side of the dial so seven o'clock up to 11 o'clock the r of rolex is going to line up with the hour markers now the next part is finishing which is a weird one because at the start i said rolex isn't really known for its high finishing but there are areas of the watch which will be absolutely perfect and that's usually around text and markers the fake one that we have here that the text has been executed absolutely horribly it's really quite sharp the size and shape of the numerals is incorrect but the main thing for me is how poorly this has been executed the font on the dial is a tricky area because over time again rolex changes the fonts the shape the spacing that changes over time but again the big thing to look out for is how has it been executed font on or printing of the dial on a real rolex will be perfect the printing on this watch on my fake rolex is decent it to the naked eye it looks absolutely fine when you get up close that's when it starts to fall apart the last point about finishing is again text and spacing that number on the date disk must be printed absolutely perfectly and the placement of it must be in the middle of the date window as you can see on this fake one it's just terrible it looks crap the next point is the movement and this is probably the easiest way to identify a fake watch but it's also hard because you need the watch in your hand a real rolex the movement will feel absolutely buttery smooth when you interact with it through the crown when you unwind the crown on a real rolex there should be a little bit of resistance because essentially you're unlocking the crown but as you unscrew it that should feel super smooth when you interact with the movement either winding the watch or changing the time all of those cogs moving together should just feel like you're sliding a hot knife through butter on a fake watch it's a completely different story even unwinding the crown unlocking the crown it feels horrible it feels the finishing of the thread is just terrible and then when you wind it and interact with it the movement is just not as exact it doesn't feel as highly engineered as what a real rolex does if at any point it feels like there's sand in the movement or as if you're pushing a knife through soggy sand then that's that's not a good sign this game over now there are expensive fake watches that have actually cloned a real rolex movement or at least attempted to there's technology in a rolex movement which is just incredibly hard to copy and it's just not commercially viable for a fake counterfeiting company to copy the watch there's a reason why relics watches cost so much of course as part of the branding but they are highly engineered things and they're difficult to manufacture which is why good copies costs a lot of money which i just find completely ironic even with the highest grade of cloned relics watch any half decent watchmaker could spot a fake movement from a mile away this one that i have in the back of this watch is just i don't think anyone would be fooled by this it looks absolutely shocking the finish on the parts it just looks bad so they're my six main points around identifying a fake watch again the big caveat is the fact that you can have a watch that ticks all of these boxes and it can still be fake equally you can have a watch that doesn't quite line up one of these things and it could be absolutely fine so it is a tricky way and a way to get around all of that trickiness is to buy a new watch from a rolex authorized dealer or to buy a watch from a reputable dealer like the guys over at cronings chronix have the largest group of in-house watchmakers who authenticate every single watch that they sell so without doubt what you're buying is 100 legit credits have also given me a discount code to give to you and that's bark and jack all in capitals use that when you check out and depending on how much you spend you could save between 75 and 750 pounds you get money off of that code and it helps the channel out as well so it's just a win-win situation and you don't have to buy relics it can be on any watch at all although i guess if you're watching this video you're kind of you're probably looking for relics aren't you whenever i do a video on this fake watch i always get comments of people saying agent can i buy that watch a few can i have it the answer is no i don't want this going into the public domain in fact what you could do is um i've got one of these and i'm going to get a thingy that's going to do that um so if you're interested in that or you like this video hit subscribe down there and a little bell icon so you get notifications when i drop new videos and drop a watch if you like this video then hit that thumbs up button if you like reading watch articles or want to check out our straps jump over to barkunjac.com if you're on instagram give me a follow at spark and jack i'll see you guys next time take care

Channel: Adrian Barker

Views: 1,677,289

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Id: QOsldVbCMHs

Length: 11min 6sec (666 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 25 2021