How To Not Mistake Fake Old Watches For The Real Thing
June 12th, 2011 Steve Taylor
Old watches are essentially little collectible slices of history, and wearing one is like wearing a piece of history right on your body. The delicate artistry and engineering of a fine old watch is a joy to behold, for those who collect these antiques, and they can be an enjoyable, intriguing piece of jewelry to wear.
There are the die hard collectors of these watches who enjoy the stories and the history of the timepieces more than they do wearing them on their arm. And yet others get into old watches as a means of turning a profit by collecting them and then reselling them to the die hard collectors at a higher price.
Antique watches were manufactured in many different shapes and sizes, but when you go to buy one, it pays to be mindful that some watch vendors are less than honest and are looking to sell you fake copies of old watches–counterfeits–hoping that you won’t notice the difference and they can make an easy buck off you. It pays to be mindful of a few things when you’re interested in purchasing an antique watch:
The counterfeits use cheap components that weigh less. Fakes also typically do not have the bevelled company logo on them like authentic older watches do. And the counterfeits don’t have the proper serial number for the watch to check out in the official watch database of the manufacturing company, which is easy to check for yourself if you simply go online and search Google for the name of the watch company followed by the phrase “serial number” and then click one of the options that will appear for either searching that company’s serial number database for this exact purpose, or you’ll find a huge long list of the serial numbers you can search through to see the serial number of the watch you’re interested in buying is included in this list. It’s always in your best interest to ask a lot of questions about the old watches you want, when inquiring with the person or company selling them and only ever make a choice after you’ve checked the above things yourself and you’re convinced the watches are genuine. For this to be possible, you have to first take a little time and learn a bit about the watches you’re keen on and get to know them as well as you can so that you don’t end up thinking you’re buying a gorgeous, valuable timepiece when it’s really just a worthless piece of pretty junk.
If you keep this in mind when negotiating over old watches, you could be on your way to making some valuable purchases!
Steve T is an antique watches enthusiast and an antique jewelry collector. You can learn more about older watches on his blog.
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