The Watch Appreciation Thread - Page 957

A lot of gray.market watches will have their serials lasered off. This may complicate warranty issues, depending on brand.

Generally, I would buy new if the watch has a proprietary movement, Rolex and JLC being the exception.

i never have seen that. and i would never buy a watch with the serial number removed.

+1

Went with the 390 today.

looks magnificent.

Beautiful!

Right - why would you buy one like that? There's plenty of solid grey market dealers selling legit goods.

 

I believe the word is "fenced" 

The word is "sold to the grey dealers with a substantial discount by ADs who need to clean up their inventory but don't want to get in trouble with the manufacturers who keep track of serial numbers". Common practice. Never buy though, I agree with that.

what does your collection consist of these days? if i may be so bold.

To coin a phrase, precisely. A gray market watch is basically a pre-owned watch as far as warranty goes with many brands.in some cases it may be better to buy used. Omega used to be especially persnickety in this regard.

+1

As much as I'd like to support official channels, the price differentials are too big to be ignored for what is essentially the same product.

Of the ~ 10 Panerai / Rolex etc that I've bought I'd say 2 were from an AD and the rest used or grey.

Never pay retail - ever. Also, never seen a serial removed on anything I've bought.

http://www.chronocentric.com/omega/consumeralert.shtml#policies

 

I have personally seen Omegas with serials removed, so it does happen. And it can complicate things for the buyer. 

 

I would suspect that many other (more expensive) brands turn a blind eye to the issue, and so there's no incentive for the gray market dealer to remove the serial in that case. 

 

It may not be an issue with Omega any more since they are aggressively elevating their brand profile and prices.  

On the other hand, if they are still concerned about this, I would under no circumstances buy a gray market Omega watch. This would be especially true if I were going to buy one of their watches with proprietary movements such as the jumping hour coaxial planet ocean.

Not sure why everyone is getting so huffy about this issue. You guys sound like Reev when he defends buying fakes.
Edited by Hayward - 9/30/12 at 5:37pm