I wear a replica watch. Before buying it, I browsed replica forums to learn more about it and truth be told, there are a lot of guys who actually own the real thing but choose to wear a very high, AAA quality replica instead because they're afraid to damage the real thing or have it stolen.
There are different grades of replicas however. Some of them are so good that you cannot really tell it's a replica unless you open the actual watch up to see the movement, these ones you won't find in those market places in SEA. To get those, you buy them online from the vendors who get them from the factory and they'll cost anywhere from $500 to a K sometimes more if they have real parts in them. You send them an email and the money, they send you a quality control picture, once you ok it, they ship it to you.
Little things like the size of the hands are how to tell them apart and can only be distinguished if you look at it up close under a loop. Other things is the way the font of the date wheel looks. While browsing those forums I often thought to myself that I like the font on the replica more than on the real thing...
There are also cases of the real thing having it's own imperfection that the guys on those forums brought up with pictures to prove their point, you think because you spend 20k you are getting something flawless but thats not always the case. In that subculture they also do something called frankeinsteining a watch which is when you start off with a fake and then slowly put real parts into it. This gets tricky because it can become very hard to tell a real one apart from a fake. Thats a hustle in itself and probably what shows up a lot on ebay and amazon.
Following what HonantheBarbarian said though, some timepieces are of such good quality that they cannot be accurately replicated and sold profitably. The factories that make these AAA grade replicas will usually buy the real thing and reverse engineer them. A good example of hard watches to replicate would be Richard Milles or Pateks.
So why do I wear a replica? After graduating, someone close to me gave me a real watch worth over 10k. Someone stole it from me and I never got it back. It was upsetting but I was determined to buy another one so I saved up money and then browsed around for something I liked. One day I know I'll buy the real thing so it's not a big deal to me and usually if someone asks I'll tell them its a replica anyways.
I'm only talking about replica watches though. I'm not into wearing replica clothes or anything else like that.
There are different grades of replicas however. Some of them are so good that you cannot really tell it's a replica unless you open the actual watch up to see the movement, these ones you won't find in those market places in SEA. To get those, you buy them online from the vendors who get them from the factory and they'll cost anywhere from $500 to a K sometimes more if they have real parts in them. You send them an email and the money, they send you a quality control picture, once you ok it, they ship it to you.
Little things like the size of the hands are how to tell them apart and can only be distinguished if you look at it up close under a loop. Other things is the way the font of the date wheel looks. While browsing those forums I often thought to myself that I like the font on the replica more than on the real thing...
There are also cases of the real thing having it's own imperfection that the guys on those forums brought up with pictures to prove their point, you think because you spend 20k you are getting something flawless but thats not always the case. In that subculture they also do something called frankeinsteining a watch which is when you start off with a fake and then slowly put real parts into it. This gets tricky because it can become very hard to tell a real one apart from a fake. Thats a hustle in itself and probably what shows up a lot on ebay and amazon.
Following what HonantheBarbarian said though, some timepieces are of such good quality that they cannot be accurately replicated and sold profitably. The factories that make these AAA grade replicas will usually buy the real thing and reverse engineer them. A good example of hard watches to replicate would be Richard Milles or Pateks.
So why do I wear a replica? After graduating, someone close to me gave me a real watch worth over 10k. Someone stole it from me and I never got it back. It was upsetting but I was determined to buy another one so I saved up money and then browsed around for something I liked. One day I know I'll buy the real thing so it's not a big deal to me and usually if someone asks I'll tell them its a replica anyways.
I'm only talking about replica watches though. I'm not into wearing replica clothes or anything else like that.