On this video, I'm gonna be going over a very important topic that I actually get a lot
of requests about and it's, how to spot a fake Rolex.
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Alright, so for Rolex there's a lot of different models that they have and there's a lot of
different ones that are copied. I would say that the one that they did the best job on
is the Submariner. It seems to be the one the that gets the closest to look exactly
like the real product.
This particular example that I have here is a yellow gold Sub.
And I don't know about you guys, but the first thing that I spot right off the back is the
color.
Right here with both of them in front of me, it's pretty easy to see which is the one that
it is.
Obviously this one right here looking a little bit cheddar cheese gold is the one that in
my opinion just shouts fake right off the back.
But to the untrained eye that could be something that maybe they won't pick up, especially
if they don't have it side by side.
So the first thing that grabbed by attention when I actually saw the watch was the obvious
color. I just feel like it's very sharp yellow, almost like it was ran over with a highlighter
of sorts.
But the thing is I said OK well let's just say it's been sitting a hundred million years
in a safe, which would highly be unlikely considering it's a pretty modern watch and
maybe it's had some like oxidation. It kind of looks weird, whatever. You see it a lot
of with the old school Presis.
But then comes the weight. I mean, the weight is a dead giveaway. The second you grab it
in your hand, this thing feels like it's made out of titanium compared to the other one.
I mean, if we go ahead and weight them side by side, you're gonna see the drastic difference.
So right off the back, we went for the color, then second was the weight. But let's see
exactly what was the difference in weight.
Alright, so the obvious fake when you put it on the scale, it comes in at 148 grams,
147 around there.
Obviously weight too light. When you put the gold one on, I mean it's like a very big difference.
It's at 221 grams.
So it's a big difference because obviously gold is a lot denser and way heavier than
stainless steel and obviously this is not made out of the highest quality stainless
steel, which is what Rolex uses.
So my guess is that obviously it's a stainless steel Sub that they kind of used like PVD
coating of sorts and kind of just, in other words, gold plated it.
Another thing that I wanna point out is that all gold Rolexes...all modern gold Rolexes
when you have the pins where the screws are for the removable links, they're not drilled
all the way through, so on this side is the actual head of the screw, but on the reverse
side it's gonna be a smooth polish where the actual screw doesn't perforate all the way
through.
However, this gold Submariner clearly has the holes on the other side. Another red flag.
These are easy red flags that you guys could pick up at home and you don't have to be an
expert like me that's touched hundreds and hundreds of these watches.
There is no gold Rolex where the bracelet, the pins where they pass all the way through.
So you gotta keep that in mind. If you see a pinhole on both sides, that's a bad sign.
So this particular thing might be a little bit harder to find on a stainless steel watch
because the stamps that come on a stainless steel model are not the same as the gold,
but the gold one has very particular stamp and the one thing you're gonna notice is they
just don't look anything the same. Of course they try to make them look very similar, but
they don't. They're not the same stamp.
The Rolex crown doesn't look right and then there's of course the stamp of quality, which
when you magnify it with the loupe like this one, you're gonna see that it's actually the
head of a St. Bernard dog. You know, the original one is a very small stamp pressed into the
gold that distorts the gold and leaves perfect shape. However, the fake one is pretty much
just a very superficial scribble with a laser edge.
So remember, anything that's gold will always have the stamp of quality and that's a good
thing that you can loupe and see it for yourself.
So let's move on to something else, the end links. The end links on this watch are also
a dead giveaway because when you look at them from the back, on the solid gold version,
you can actually see that the end link is made out of three pieces, the two outer pieces
and the center link.
This one here is all one solid piece. Again, another dead giveaway.
Yes you would have to know these things like I do and here side by side, but out of all
of these, if you pick up at least three or four or them, the watch is definitely a fake.
So here's a trick that I like to always do and I actually do it on every watch. I'm gonna
magnify it fully here on camera but, one of the things that I always look at is, in the
center of the hands in the dial layout there's actually what appears to be like a rivet on
the last hand that's on top, which is usually the seconds hand or the seconds for the chrono
that has a very particular rivet that goes on there. That for me is always a dead giveaway.
You have to see it with a loupe, but man it never fails, OK?
The fake one looks like the cheapest rivet you can imagine with sharp edges, whereas
the original always has a super smooth polished finished rivet. I love to use the rivet as
a way to see if a watch is real or fake. Now, not to be confused with the butcher watchmaker
that maybe perhaps ruined it, but again, these are kind of clues that you like to look at
to piece the whole puzzle together.
Another easy one for me is the pearl. These Submariners have a pearl as they're called
at the 12 o'clock position on the rotation bezel. Always looks kin of funny. The first
thin to notice from the original is that it usually has an even tone with the rest of
the markers on the dial and hands, whereas the fake always looks always wider or it looks
wider, so the tone won't be right. The size won't be right. Stuff like that and also seems
to be always taller when it's fake.
Now, look guys I have a bunch of different things that are just different on this watch.
We can go on this video for 30 minutes. The clasp layout actually looks pretty good. Stampings
are all wrong. Clearly it's just been gold plated, but the clasp actually looks pretty
good, dead on.
But a little one that I like to use that's always a shortcut on these fake Rolexes is
the original, the bezel actually sits on top of roller balls and springs and they will
always have a little of like a spring action, almost that you could push the bezel down
a little bit. It will move very little, but it'll have a a spring action. Fakes almost
all the time are all the way down. There's no play.
So that's one of the easiest ways that you could tell if these watches are real or fake
without opening the movement.
Obviously when you open the movement, there's gonna be a big surprise. This thing on the
outside looks great, but the inside is janky. And don't ever let that be just the signifying
sign because there has been cases, maybe not on this gold one, but perhaps on a stainless
steel one, where people have put a clone mechanism or a perhaps even an older mechanism that
maybe they pieced up at a cheap price to kind of make it feel like it's, to kind of make
it feel like it's original.
People will go above and beyond to make these things happen.
Now, remember that some of these fake watches were puzzled together not so a guy can wear
them and flex on their Instagram and act like he's actually has money or can afford it when
he doesn't, but sometimes is more just so that they could rip somebody off and actually
turn a profit out of these fake watches.
Yeah like, honestly the dial is pretty nice. The dial is very nice and it looks very, very
good. And the bezel, the actual ceramic bezel insert is also pretty impressive. I mean,
overall I feel like that the dimensions are almost spot on. There's always gonna be little
trails, but I'm quite impressed by the finish and the look of the hands, the dial and the
bezel insert.
So pretty much if you follow some of these guidelines that I put out there. Like I said,
I could go on this for about an hour and a half because the differences are there and
I see them, but you wanna use these quick little reference guys to kind of piece it
together. And remember, one thing for me won't ever tell me if the watch is fake. You have
to have several of them that's gonna piece the puzzle together and really prove it to
you.
This one being gold for me the easiest thing would be the color and the weight. There's
no way that they could mimic that. However, there has been some watches where I don't
know how they did kind of weigh it down a bit and it was very similar. This one is a
dead bust just on weight and color.
But be careful out there when you're buying a watch from someone you don't know and like
the saying always says, buy the seller the first, then buy the watch.
So feel free to comment below on any things that you might have noticed on this watch.
And don't forget to hit the notifications bell till it looks like this. And if you liked
this video, please like and share. Also, subscribe to our channel. My name is Eric. This is Watch
Your Style.