How do you know if the watch you are buying is real of fake?
The old saying is if it’s too good to be true, it probably is. But with Ebay, buying highly sought after items, with a little skill, some luck and good timing, can net a person a rare find while not hurting their wallet enormously.
Ebay, the online buying and selling marketplace, is now stepping up its user experience to help watch collectors make sure what they are buying is truly what it says it is. With its new Ebay Authenticate program, the company is going to greater lengths to verify, through a third-party company, the watches to make sure they are exactly what they say they are.
Why is Ebay doing this now? Well, it keeps users on their website since potential buyers will be able to know, with complete certainty, that what they are buying is the real thing.
The new, vintage and used products number nearly 7,000. The watches available are from the top brands, including Rolex, Omega, Breitling and Audemars Piguet ranging in prices from $500 to upwards of $50,000.
Under the program — that first came about in 2017 to verify and authenticate handbags — Ebay employs third-party experts to examine and verify products. This is all being done to help curb counterfeit products, as the secondary watch market is a $5 billion industry, according to Ebay. The company goes on to say a watch is purchased every five seconds on Ebay, with the Rolex GMT-Master II “Pepsi” the most-sought after watch globally.
5 Comments
dan
great piece on spotting a fake but i wanted to warn others about scams still running on e-bay –
i recently let my guard down & was taken for 700 on a watch deal by a nigerian scam that e-bay knowingly let run for a couple of years w/o doing anything about it – i only found out when paypal alerted me & they told me they also knew this had been going on for a time – please be careful
LARRY D BROOKS
I bought my wife’s Rolex and my Rolex from separate sellers on ebay. But I spent several months researching them and watching them as well as purchasing each watch from very reliable, long-time sellers on ebay who had sterling feedback records. One was a jewelry store who had a website along with a brick-and-mortar store, the other a seller exclusively of fine watches and nothing else on ebay.
And as soon as I received each watch, I took it to our local Rolex dealer jewelry store to have them open each one up and verify its authenticity as well as documenting the numbers (model and serial) between the lugs on each side of the main case. Before leaving there, I compared those numbers to the ones the sellers had supplied to me during the sale. And each matched and was the real deal.
I never could have slept at night without knowing these watches were the real thing no matter how honest, well known or trustworthy the sellers were.
Just do your homework and take your time!
Rickajho
I dunno – for me spotting a fake Rolex is easy just by looking at the face of the watch. There is a certain proportionality to everything on the face of a Rolex. With fakes my instinct just shouts “Wrong!!!” without looking at it much further.
LARRY BROOKS
Yeah but the counterfeiters are getting better and better all the time.
Richard Burton
Buying over the internet is a nightmare as you cant get the watch in your hands before handing over the dosh.
So its either pay AD prices or take a gamble on getting a discounted watch.