Rolex

There’s a new consignment gallery in town that I’ve been meaning to check out for a while. Tonight they hosted a speaker on a topic that interested me, so my mom and I dropped in.

In addition to some cool lamps and a few swords, they have a case full of watches, bearing a sign: “All watches: $30.”

At least half of the watches are Rolexes. (Some Movado watches, too, which are also ludicrously expensive.)

It didn’t take too long for it to dawn on me that the reason they were $30 each wasn’t that they were insane, but because they were most likely all fake.

I toyed with buying one anyway (along with an ancient rangefinder camera), because it did look cool, and besides, who’d know if it was the real thing or not? I ultimately didn’t, but I’m considering going back.

It turns out that fake Rolexes aren’t the exclusive territory of guys in New York with trenchcoats. They’re sold online, but are generally sold under the euphemistic term, “Replica.” This alone isn’t too shocking (although their honesty is.) What’s shocking is that the fake Rolexes are still going for 4 digits.

My only concern (well, besides legal ones) is that none of the watches were ticking; I assume they just need new batteries, but can’t really be sure.

5 thoughts on “Rolex

  1. I know people who own real Rolex watches. Some of them paid for, one of them a company bonus award. I don’t really get the attraction. But then I don’t wear a watch and I don’t wear other jewelry. I understand that the price is more about the looks than the timekeeping ability – even though the timekeeping ability is reported to be pretty good.

  2. Quite frankly, I’m only fond of a few of their watches. The majority, in my opinion, are ugly.

    I think the reason they’re popular is conspicuous consumption. If Rolex tomorrow announced it were slashing prices and that its watches would cost no more than $200, yet be kept the same, I bet sales would plummet. (At the very least, I bet a different sort of person would buy them.)

    Of course, given that the motivation to buy them is social, as opposed to being renowned for quality (which is surely the case too), why wouldn’t you want a fake one?

  3. @@: If you’re logged in, you should be able to post without your comments ending up in moderation.

    (I had to do the @user: thing for you, just for the @@: humor.)

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