$1000 for the fake? Ali Express has this model for under $100
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There are good fakes and bad fakes, and sometimes the ali express model is sold with the aid of dodgy photography,
That is too much for a Casio. This one is £7.99.
I mean, I could probably tell the difference between a $10 bottle of wine and a $100 bottle of wine. At that level the quality would be obvious to an average person. I doubt that I could tell the difference between a $100 bottle of wine and a $1000 bottle of wine. At that level the quality is probably only discernable to trained people, or the ultra rich who care more about the status of spending. Although I am prepared to test this theory and demonstrate my ignorance if anyone wants to be me any wine that costs more than $10.
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I’ve previously been suckered into watching one of these Watchfinder & Co videos by BoingBoing before, and NEVER AGAIN. They’re terrible.
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I once spent the equivalent of 120 bucks on a fake Rolex in Hong Kong. It looks pretty good, but the dial has to be wound about twice a day and it doesn’t really tell time all that well.
Still, the best souvenir I have ever bought in my many trips to HK.
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I agree with your point, but would choose a different metaphor, because the worlds’ best experts also fail to distinguish between bottles of wine when tastings are properly blinded (which they never are outside of a few studies that were done around this). In one test, they couldn’t even distinguish red from white. Wine tasting is basically all bullshit. However people can enjoy it anyway as a cultural experience, and it being bullshit doesn’t mean it has no value for people who enjoy it. That little soapbox sidebar had nothing to do with your larger point, which I again agree with.
Seriously. They’re all the same- four photos Ken Burnsing for ten minutes while rambling on at length about how good fakes are, without ever actually teaching you anything about how to spot fakes.
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I don’t so much sneer at the elitism than I do just find it kind of gross that someone would (and more importantly could) spend almost double the median American annual salary on a single wristwatch.
Yes, I love craftsmanship and artistry, but in terms of watchmaking (and automotive design, to reference the $8-million Maybach) the craftsmanship is primarily about the movement and the functional design, with aesthetic design and materials following. In contrast, with something like the Faberge egg (including those that incorporate mechanical elements) the reverse is true.
By those standards, one can reach the height of a watchmaker’s ability for an automatic or mechanical chronometer with some useful complications on all counts by spending between $3-$10k. Above that point, you’re paying for materials and brand names and limited editions and stunt complications and status symbols.
Agreed. There’s nothing wrong with buying a nice and pretty thing if you can afford it. The problems start arriving when doing so becomes a basis of status-seeking, financial speculation, and/or obsessive collecting to fill some psychological chasm. All of those things – at whatever the object’s price point – tend to de-prioritise beauty and quality and joy as well as crowding out other important aspects of life (such as empathy for other humans). The Faberge egg is a textbook example: as much as I appreciate their beauty, the sort of person who collects them has historically been pretty spoiled and self-indulgent (e.g. Tsar Nicholas II and Malcolm Forbes).
I’m done watching them as well. While I’ll happily comment in the topics, the videos themselves are not instructional but just advertisements telling us that Watchfinder won’t sell you a fake.
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You can probably buy a cheap automatic movement that’ll drop right in there if you were so inclined.
ETA: is it a snide Submariner? Cos there’s loads of cheap & cheerful Submariner ‘homage’ watches out there you could likely swap the parts with.
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ummm…i need the $100 fake fake. Is that an option?
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In my budget…AND stylish!
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I assume anyone able to drop 100k on a watch would be rather content with their life’s choices.
All I was waiting for the whole video was a mention of the extremely obvious difference in positioning, color and font of the logotype, but I guess the guy is just going to ramble about minuscule differences in thickness for ten minutes.
My assumption is always that anyone that is pouring that much into signaling wealth and status is desperately trying to fill a hole that can’t be filled. Certainly not content with anything
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Maybe. But as much as I would approve of the super wealthy living in perpetual existential dread, I partly suspect that’s just a cliche we like to tell ourselves as consolation.
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