R52 000? Imitation Watch Collectors Don't Flinch, And Even Take Seconds

Time has never been more ubiquitous and in your face. It's on the phone, the computer, the car and every blasted appliance.

"You don't need a best replica watches uk to tell the time," confesses timepiece connoisseur Watch Anish at a midtown Manhattan cocktail party celebrating luxury watches. (Real name: Anish Bhatt, but as an Instagram brand, he's so beyond that.)

You hear this observation plenty in the haute horology world, even from people selling six-figure timepieces.

Also, that a Timex tells pretty good time.

But facts matter not a second hand to obsessive collectors, almost all of whom are male, in a market where $15,000 (around R20 000) models are deemed "middle-class" timepieces.

Luxury high quality iwc replica watches are Porsches for your wrist, Birkin bags for boys that speak stacks of cash about the owners. To aficionados, that thing you're wearing, especially if it's a quartz movement, isn't remotely interesting. It's barely a watch.

Attending a watch event is like landing in a tiny, exotic and costly country, where you never really master the language or the customs.

At expertly lighted booths that make the watches sparkle like diamonds (the ladies' models are often encrusted with them), the dealers resemble charming Bond villains in dark clothes and black gloves – so as not to smudge the merchandise.

There are many tall men of impeccable grooming named Roland and Lothar, with seductive accents, with whom you might care to discuss the merits of a minute repeater or a flyback chronograph into the wee hours. The saleswomen are exceptionally knowledgeable and, it will come as no surprise, attractive.

Their brands sound like 19th-century nobility and are treated accordingly: Vacheron Constantin, Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet, Jaeger-LeCoultre. Their ads feature Formula One racers and tennis and international film stars who bankroll luxury magazines, which would be naked – and probably defunct – without them. Luxury fake rolex watches ads seem more ubiquitous than the objects they're selling.