Is my TAG Heuer Authentic? All questions here please

imagwai

So these are artificially aged?

Jim Dollares

It's quite a genius (but discusting burn forever in hell) idea to fake old models that are cheap to produce and people pay decent money for

jamesbizs

Wait, watchcompany-1 ? When did you buy it? They should have been gone awhile ago.

And yes it's the same fake 1000's we've been discussing on here. Bezel aside which is not original, look at the end links with the large code and wide flat retainers and the hollow folded over center links of the bracelet. All the fakes have the same thing.

cmbezln

So after my bout with watchingo and their clearly fake way211c, I bought a pre-owned way211a-0 who's serial number is registered with tag and still in warranty. After weeks with it and loving it, I'm about floored to find out th second hand appears to be incorrect. Please tell me I didn't get hit with a fake watch AGAIN!!

The quality of this one and the bracelet feel overall way higher quality than the fake I recieved, the box is correct and matches the watch. This is the only thing I've noticed up until this point. Ugh

Aquagraph

Would it not have been a good idea to be a bit more cautious a second time and maybe post here before you bought? And that second hand is glaringly wrong.

Plus don't we all know by now that modern pre-owned Aquaracers are a minefield that should only be bought from somewhere reputable like Watchfinder?

It's like that thing people say about dieting - doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

jamesbizs

Only thing I'm seeing off, is the second hand. All the other tell tale signs of a fake are not there. If that is a fake, that is by far the best one I've ever seen aside from the second hand. And trust me when I say, you wouldn't be able to feel a quality difference between the fakes and the real one. They are almost identical, aside from the style of pin/tube they used, and a slight different in how they machine the cuts on the insides of the links.

I have a feeling there was something wrong with the watch, and the second hand had to be replaced.

cmbezln

That is my suspicion as well, because on the last watch I spend many countless hours researching, even going as far as contacting what are supposed to be dealers of the "best" aquaracer fakes to get images of their fakes, and all the 41mm fakes I saw had very big tells.

I know one of the previous posters said the pip was suspect, but to my eyes it looks pretty genuine. Every fake I've seen has an issue where the pip looks bulbous and there is no clearly defined spacer between the pearl and bezel which creates sort of a black line around it, which you see on this watch here.

This watch also came from a local jewelry shop and I suspect that they may have worked on it and perhaps they bent the original seconds hand or maybe just misplaced it with another, although the strange thing is the only second hands from tag I've seen like this is from previous gen aquaracers and they are all orange from what I've seen.

I dunno, my gut is really telling me this is genuine but with that seconds hand it's going to make resell in the future hard.

I might also contact tag to see if they have a history of work done on this watch, maybe tag themselves messed up

imagwai

My comments about the bezel pip wasn't based on any specifc knowledge of this model - just that I thought it didn't look quite right in the first pic you posted. In the subsequent pics, it looks better.

cmbezln

As a slight update; the ebay seller (which luckily is a local jeweler here in Chicago) apparently had the original purchase receipt and I was able to call the local AD here and verify that the watch was indeed purchased through them, and the timeline matches up with what's in tag's database. I also had them look up the warranty history and it looks like this watch was sent in for warranty repair last year, so in my mind that connects the dots in that it was likely tag themselves replaced the seconds hand with the incorrect hand when they were reassembling.

I'm pretty confident it's genuine at this point, might send it back in to tag to fix their messup in case i ever go to sell this thing. Thanks for the help/opinions.

imagwai

If it was warranty repaired last year, then I would definitely be sending it into TAG to verify authenticity and get the second hand replaced under that warranty (assuming they have one!)

jamesbizs

The thing with serial numbers is, sometimes they are reused from REAL watches. So there is always a chance. lol not to put anymore doubts in your head... but I just thought I'd mention that. The dial on yours also appears real. The fake ones don't have the markings lined up the same way on the lines. Don't know why they wouldn't just make the dial more real. As good as they make the fake ones, you'd think it wouldn't be much harder to make them more accurate.