> Some of the fakes have the same movement as the real item. Not just "some," many of them do, in fact. A lot of low end "luxury" watches don't even have cust

> Some of the fakes have the same movement as the real item. Not just "some," many of them do, in fact. A lot of low end "luxury" watches don't even have custom movements, just standard ETAs. Chinese factories can produce clones of the ETA 2824 and 2836 movements, so you can get a fake watch with the exact same movement for a fraction of the price. If you ever decide you want COSC-level timing, you can just buy an ETA and swap it in. Factories are also producing high-quality replicas of in-house movements such as the Rolex 3132 -- I say "replicas" because they can take the same parts that you'd use to repair a genuine movement. Once you're at that level, you need a loupe and a mental encyclopedia to be able to figure out what's going on and which is real. Edit: Replaced "China" to clarify that it's not a national aim or anything like that. > G-shock Ironically, the fake industry doesn't just apply to mechanical watches -- even G-shocks are faked quite well. You can buy them from $5-10 quite often because the base parts are just that cheap.