Buying from Dealers
Sure you can go it alone, but a wiser course might be to establish a relationship with a trusted dealer, particularly for more expensive pieces, and/or those where you need an expert’s eye.
To find pieces, dealers look in many of the same places you would on your own:
– eBay (I shudder to think how many saved searches they have),
– Chrono24, where private individuals in particular may have interesting pieces, and
– auctions worldwide.
If you have the ability to attend auctions, here you can get a firsthand look at dealers actively looking to purchase for clients or themselves. You might not know why a dealer is purchasing – sometimes it can be just to protect the price(s) of their existing inventory of the same/like pieces.
Beyond these “basics”, dealers have a number of advantages:
– will be contacted directly about pieces for sale by individuals (as well as other dealers) who may know of them from industry articles, social media, referrals, and so forth,
– may be a part of WhatsApp and other groups of dealers who regularly buy and sell pieces within their network,
– relationships with their existing clients looking to sell,
– “pickers” who find watches at estate sales, antique stores and the like, and
– retailers, who will see watches come in from an owner and then offer them out to a number of dealers, with the best offer winning the piece.
You might expect that auction houses, under serious time pressure, would be where bad watches slip by. But we can’t leave dealers out. On the below, I am not implying that in all cases the dealer knew that they were selling fakes, of course. But good dealers (and this applies to really any online seller) have turned bad, some have sold known fakes, some have simply stolen goods.
Everyone: please do your homework before buying (Google dealers, find references, see if they have been banned from forums, search their past…)! Even better if the dealer has a permanent storefront you can visit. If there are alarm bells in your head going off, step away. Pay with a credit card. Always. No wires. Use an escrow service. Don’t send money using PayPal to “friends and family”. Buy safe!
- Always check the fine print and do your research. WatchRapport, with ads everywhere, looks like your standard watch dealer, but when you look closer you’ll see the disclaimer that “Products on [our] website may contain data from other online open sources. Watch Rapport makes no claims of product ownership unless otherwise specified.” So, what this means is, when you click ‘Buy’ (unless specified), you are giving WatchRapport an interest-free loan, at which point they go out and try to find the watch for you. Which they may or may not be able to do, as they most often don’t have the watch in their inventory. And that watch you saw on their site? Also consider that “Product photo(s) may not reflect the exact watch being sold. While the watch you will receive will be the exact same model, have the same specifications, and in the same condition as described, some photos are stock images or from our network of various suppliers and are subject to change.”
- The FBI opened an investigation into the ‘Timepiece Gentleman’ (TPG), Anthony Farrer, in 2023 and arrested him at the start of November 2023. The Central District of California press release, ‘Founder of Beverly Hills ‘Gentlemen Timepieces’ Consignment Store Charged with Conning Victims in Luxury Watch Ponzi-Type Scheme‘ details the charges.
The dealer, Anthony Farrer, unfortunately let his “demons get the best of him”, and has lost/misplaced/spent somewhere between $2m and $5m of customer timepieces. Previously named one of the “Top 100 Watch Influencers in the World” by WatchPro (oops), having previously disappeared from social media (2021), and previously with a history of racial epithets, 6 DUIs, 2+ domestic violence arrests, assaults, public intoxication, grand larceny, stolen credit cards and government IDs. Something is public results in a black eye to the industry, and now those dealers that staunchly supported Farrer and regularly were in contact with him, such as Roman Sharf from Luxury Bazaar, and his former coworkers Marco Nicolini (Grand Caliber) as well as Liz Taylor and Darby McVay (RebeLux LA) have to deal with those presuming guilt my association. In the lead up, there were those who were seemingly already onto him in advance of the train wreck, such as the individual asking him in a YouTube Q&A “on a scale of 1 to 10, how much of a scammer do you think you are?”. Looks for an update following Anthony’s court date in October 2024. - HQ Milton was selling a fake Rolex Daytona 6262 until the community was notified (it sounds like they blocked the outer, @perezcope, when he brought this up). HQ Milton subsequently pulled the watch from sale (better than Antiqorum, which went ahead with the sale in June 2020 although notified multiple times that the watch was a fraken) and issued an apology. This isn’t to say HQ Milton is a regular seller of bad watches, but I highlight to show that it does happen. HQ Milton is one of, if not the best known, Rolex dealer online. So just take this into consideration when purchasing. And yes, we all make mistakes. I’ll leave it others to debate whether dealers should be able to catch a franken when selling a $60k watch.
- Required reading on Rolex Forums about Horology House owner Chris Essery selling a fake Rolex (and a lot of runaround). Essery was a “trusted seller” with a YouTube account with nearly 70k followers that discussed how to tell the difference between fake and real Rolexes. You can listen to an interview of the buyer in Scottish Watches Podcast #116. And don’t make up your mind until you’ve read the WhatsApp transcript of the mess. Up to you to decide about any relation with Nick Glynatsis.
- A previously trustworthy dealer Steve Mulholland (Mulholland Time) gets banned from forums and still scams people, years later.
- Good seller turned bad…a scam where a good known online collector, Jason Latif, sold his same collection over and over again…to 19 people.
- This “original” Rolex 1016 sold by Michael Morgan from Iconic Watch Company uses a case that was swapped from another 1016. Read more in the discussion on Hodinkee’s Bring-a-Loupe and see what seems to be the original watch on eBay. So yes, even when you read Hodinkee’s analysis that “…with an example [like] this, there’s little to not like..” Take this as just caution that well-educated writers can miss when watches are put-together as well. In the comments on the Hodinkee site, you can read questions around the dial text specifically.
- Here is a entertaining one. Perezcope contacts Monochrome to let them know about a fake Single Red Sea Dweller from one of their articles (that article has since been rewritten, though the original article can be found here). Monochrome doesn’t believe Perezcope, gets testy and says the subsequent article that Perescope publishes on the watch, ‘Fake Rolex Single Red Sea-Dweller‘ is vile and horse crap. Fast forward some more and the Monochrome article is up, still with negative things to say about Perezcope. Oh, and at the very end, as an aside, a note has now been added from the selling dealer saying they now have doubts about the watch. So to summarize, fake watch.
- Always a classic – a dealer (SWC Tampa) saying “I never said the dial was [authentic]” in response to a question on a purchased watch from the buyer. As always, buyer beware, right?
- A fake Breitling from Robert Maron
- Vesper selling redialed pieces as 100% original, and not listening to the customer pushback later then informed by the community that their purchases were redialed.
- A fabulous community discussion between members and a dealer regarding an Omega 2913 FAP at Davidoff – these conversations are great to see, and allow everyone to learn.
- A Universal Geneve with non-original parts from Matthew Bain
- Another great read…”unsavory activities” on VRF as a respected VRF member (“Mark Lerman = Comexfan ~ vintage1665 = Dave Rosenberg“) gets caught selling a watch that has magically picked up papers. There is also proof of purchased equipment here and here that can be used for fake dates and stamps. You can read the individual’s response to the accusations as well. From the first link in this bullet point I would recommend the quote from greekbum which nicely summarizes the state of affairs. These threads are all a great intro to who to trust! Side comment: some posters in these threads say, “thank goodness I purchased from well-respected Dealer X”… Sorry to burst anyone’s bubble, but you shouldn’t blindly trust dealers, either.
- The ‘Bring a Brain’ series on watchuseek, where poster mkws breaks down what he observes as the fleecing on Hodinkee (simply search for ‘watchuseek Bring a Brain’ for the assortment). Lately this has been more related to price points than dubious pieces.
- For a multitude of made-up Rolexes, you can check out “orchi_palar” on Instagram (as long as you can get past the reference to himself in the third person in every post, and use of the word “bro”). His main focus is on well-known dealers selling fake Rolex and Patek Philippe. Be aware that “O” has a tendency to assume guilty until proven innocent. There is one exception to that rule: he found the Phillips “Unicorn” to be correct, which is crazy (see the Phillips’ section on Auction house frankens and deception. Normally Orchi would rip a watch like that (replaced dial, hands, pushers, crown, and bracelet) to shreds.
- To follow-up on the above, Orchi also has manipulated Rolexes prior to sale.
- It is exceedingly rare to find anyone calling out watch dealers selling frankens and fakes. Wish there was more…