Rolex is easily the most counterfeited watch brand. This is simply due to its immense popularity. Black market counterfeiters love to knock off Rolex, be it a Submariner, a Milgauss, or even a fake Rolex President. Fake Rolex Submariners are a dime a dozen (Figuratively. A good fake will still set you back a couple hundred) but it’s not every day we see a fake ladies Rolex. This fake Rolex Presidential Ladies Datejust came with a customer who wanted to sell Rolex watches. Unfortunately, one was a fake! We snapped some pics in our never-ending quest for customer education.
In this overall shot, you can see some of the fake Rolex’s most glaring flaws. The first & most noticeable is the mottled “gold” – you can see the stainless steel peeking through on the links, the fluted bezel, and the crown.
The case, in this close up, also gives the fake away. You can see that the angles on the lugs are too long and the bracelet’s first linked are oddly stretched for some reason. You can also see that the lettering is imperfect on the Rolex logo (always a giveaway, remember?) Moreover, the markers are wrong (too fat, wrong color), the second hands are also too wide, the date window (and date lettering) looks sloppy, and the striation on the dial is too obvious. The real Rolex’s champagne dial is smooth with very faint lines that can only be seen upon closer inspection.
From the side, you can see that the fake’s lines are more jagged, the case back doesn’t flow seamlessly into the case and bracelet. The lugs are too pointy (see how the Rolex’s gently slope down very smoothly to meet the bracelet?) The crown is one of the worst offenders – it’s the wrong color, size and thickness. You can also see the date window protruding way to far up from the “crystal” on the fake. The fluted bezel is also too jagged, with the peaks looking rough (and again with stainless steel poking through.)
The bracelet on this fake is pretty bad too. It’s common for Presidential bracelets to stretch, but the space between the links grows – not the width of the links themselves! These are too thick, too roughly-hewn, and the clasp is all wrong.
This shot of the opened clasp shows yet another glaringly obvious flaw – every Rolex presidential bracelet in yellow gold has a rose gold clasp. This fake has a clasp that’s the same brassy yellow as the rest of the watch. You can also see that the green sticker on the back of the fake is a lurid shade of neon green (we left this shot unedited so you can see the coloring difference. With flaws this obvious it wasn’t necessary to open the case to even look at the movement to authenticate it, unlike that fake Milgauss we showed you last year. But there’s one more issue we’ll address, just in case you ever run into a Rolex you think might be fake.
You can see the engraving on the fake Rolex clasp is off. While this fake actually did get the placement of all the elements right, the technique is flawed, and as we all know, Rolex doesn’t make mistakes. The Rolex insignia is much too small, the MPN’s letter is too close to the digits and the engraving should be the same color as the metal – not darker.
