We Bought a $500 Counterfeit Rolex So Good, Even Rolex Didn’t Spot It

我们买了一块 500 美元的劳力士高仿表，连劳力士官方都没看出来

“Would you like a glass of champagne?” Even though I’m painfully thirsty and nervous beyond belief, I decline the salesperson’s offer. “要来杯香槟吗？”尽管我渴得要命，而且紧张到了极点，但我还是婉拒了销售人员的好意。

I’m sitting upstairs in Rolex’s flagship London store on Old Bond Street. I’ve just handed over a fake Rolex to the staff and requested that its bracelet be adjusted, a simple bit of maintenance that requires removing a few links. I haven’t volunteered that the watch is a phony, but I haven’t said it’s legit, either. 我正坐在伦敦老邦德街（Old Bond Street）劳力士旗舰店的楼上。我刚刚把一块假劳力士交给工作人员，要求调整表带——这只是一项简单的维护工作，需要拆掉几节表链。我没有主动承认这块表是假的，但也并没有说它是正品。

My imposter Oyster Perpetual is now on a workbench in the glass-fronted servicing room on the second floor. I can see staff in white lab coats working diligently as a salesperson joins them to carefully examine the timepiece before downsizing the metal bracelet. 我那块冒牌的蚝式恒动（Oyster Perpetual）腕表现在正放在二楼玻璃隔断维修室的工作台上。我可以看到身穿白大褂的工作人员正在勤恳地工作，一名销售人员也加入其中，在缩短金属表带之前仔细检查了这块表。

This replica is one of a few WIRED has purchased on the internet. So far, nobody in the store has spotted that the watch is a fake. Surely the game’s about to be up? Maybe there’s just time to slip away before the police are called. 这块复刻表是《连线》（WIRED）杂志在网上购买的几块手表之一。到目前为止，店里还没有人发现这块表是假的。难道骗局马上就要被拆穿了吗？也许在警察赶来之前，我还有时间溜走。

After what feels like far too long, the salesperson returns. He, like his colleagues downstairs did when I arrived, congratulates me on a beautiful watch and hands me back the counterfeit timepiece, now perfectly sized. The removed links have been placed reverently in a delicate, tiny paper bag, marked with the Rolex logo in cadmium green. Heart still pounding, I walk out. 在经历了漫长的等待后，销售人员回来了。就像我刚到时楼下的同事一样，他称赞我这块表很漂亮，并将调整好尺寸的假表交还给我。拆下来的表链被恭敬地装进了一个精致的小纸袋里，上面印着镉绿色的劳力士标志。我心跳加速，快步走了出去。

Purchasing a counterfeit Swiss watch used to mean haggling at a Canal Street market stall or ducking into a Hong Kong back alley, where an approximation of a Rolex, Patek Philippe, or Audemars Piguet could be picked up for $50. If it survived beyond the flight home, that felt like a bonus. Now, though, the era of the “super clone” has arrived. 购买瑞士假表过去意味着要在运河街（Canal Street）的市场摊位上讨价还价，或者钻进香港的后巷，花 50 美元买一块仿制的劳力士、百达翡丽或爱彼。如果它能撑到飞回家，那就算赚到了。然而现在，“超级复刻”（super clone）时代已经来临。

Mass-produced in huge quantities by Chinese factories, these watches are sold through dealers who advertise on TikTok and Instagram, broker through WhatsApp, and arrange discreet delivery to your door. Since reputation by word-of-mouth is paramount (these businesses can’t exactly show their wares in a digital shop window), they even claim to offer customer service channels, warranties, repair centers, and guarantees to send a replacement if your purchase is seized by customs. 这些手表由中国工厂大规模生产，通过在 TikTok 和 Instagram 上做广告的经销商销售，通过 WhatsApp 进行交易，并安排隐秘的送货上门服务。由于口碑至关重要（这些商家无法在数字橱窗中展示商品），他们甚至声称提供客户服务渠道、保修、维修中心，并承诺如果货物被海关扣押，将免费补发。

WIRED’s three replica Rolexes, almost indistinguishable from the real McCoy, show how good clone timepieces have become. Photograph: WIRED Staff 《连线》杂志购买的三块劳力士复刻表，几乎与真品无异，展示了复刻腕表的工艺水平已经达到了何种程度。摄影：WIRED 工作人员

In dedicated forums on Reddit and other websites, strictly moderated communities spread gossip about factories being raided by authorities, offer sketchy legal advice, upvote buyers’ photos of fake Rolexes worn behind the wheels of Lamborghinis, and even offer quality control services. 在 Reddit 和其他网站的专门论坛上，管理严格的社区传播着工厂被当局突击检查的八卦，提供不可靠的法律建议，为买家晒出的佩戴假劳力士驾驶兰博基尼的照片点赞，甚至还提供质量控制（QC）服务。

Quality control, or QC, is at the heart of this community. The subreddit r/RepTime has 269,000 weekly visitors and over 18,000 weekly contributions, according to Reddit’s own statistics. Posts about new counterfeit watch purchases pile up by the hour, both in r/RepTime and r/RepTimeQC, the offshoot subreddit focused on quality control. The posts contain photographs sent from the dealer to the customer, who then seeks advice from the RepTime community on whether they should “GL” (green-light) or “RL” (red-light) their purchase. 质量控制（QC）是这个社区的核心。根据 Reddit 的统计数据，r/RepTime 子版块每周有 26.9 万名访问者和超过 1.8 万条贡献。关于购买新假表的帖子在 r/RepTime 和专注于质量控制的分支版块 r/RepTimeQC 中每小时都在增加。这些帖子包含经销商发给客户的照片，客户随后会向 RepTime 社区寻求建议，决定是否应该对购买行为进行“GL”（绿灯放行）或“RL”（红灯拒绝）。

Every post must follow a strict format, demonstrating that the buyer has put effort into understanding the QC process and assessing their own watch before seeking the approval of the community and its moderators. As with other high-traffic subreddits, new accounts cannot post right away and instead must earn comment karma by communicating in other, more open subreddits first. Without that, posts are automatically intercepted and deleted before they appear in public and pollute the feed. 每个帖子都必须遵循严格的格式，证明买家在寻求社区和版主批准之前，已经努力了解了 QC 流程并评估了自己的手表。与其他高流量的子版块一样，新账号不能立即发帖，必须先通过在其他更开放的版块交流来赚取评论积分（karma）。否则，帖子会在公开显示并污染信息流之前被自动拦截和删除。

The posts are stuffed with coded language. Beyond the usual watch-world reference numbers and model nicknames (like a 124060 Sub, or a “Hulk” and “Pepsi”), there are factory names, often abbreviated to two or three letters, and aliases of every TD, or “trusted dealer.” 这些帖子充斥着暗语。除了常见的腕表界参考编号和型号昵称（如 124060 Sub，或“绿水鬼”Hulk 和“百事圈”Pepsi）之外，还有通常缩写为两三个字母的工厂名称，以及每一位 TD（“可信经销商”，trusted dealer）的别名。

There’s earnest talk of gaps around the SELs (solid end links of a bracelet), the shortening of “genuine” and “replica” to “Gen” and “Rep,” and an aesthetic grading system for the cloned watches going from “1:1,” “Super Rep,” and the best of the best, “NWBIG,” which stands for “Not Worth Buying in Gen”—replicas considered so accurate that buying the genuine article is deemed entirely unnecessary. 社区里热烈讨论着 SEL（表带实心端头）周围的缝隙，将“正品”（genuine）和“复刻”（replica）简称为“Gen”和“Rep”，以及一套针对复刻表的审美分级系统，从“1:1”、“超级复刻”（Super Rep），到最好的“NWBIG”（意为“不值得买正品”，Not Worth Buying in Gen）——这些复刻表被认为极其精准，以至于购买正品被认为完全没有必要。

The insidery shop talk might appeal to the devotees, but it doesn’t exactly disguise what’s going on—not that some community members seem to care about the potential illegality of replica timepieces. Numerous claims of shipments being intercepted and seized are batted away with advice to ignore letters received from customs. 这种圈内行话可能吸引了发烧友，但这并不能掩盖正在发生的事情——尽管一些社区成员似乎并不关心复刻腕表潜在的非法性。对于大量关于货物被拦截和扣押的投诉，社区成员通常会建议无视海关寄来的信件，从而将其打发掉。

Despite hundreds of quality-control requests landing in the subreddit every month, one source tells us that 98 percent of them are picked up by just three moderators. “Helping people with our comments is what we truly enjoy, and it’s the reason we spend so much time on the sub,” says one moderator, who asked to remain anonymous due to their fear of legal repercussions. They add that one of the group’s moderators “is a professional watchmaker,” but that others are amateurs in the field. 尽管每个月都有数百个质量控制请求发布在子版块中，但一位消息人士告诉我们，其中 98% 的请求是由仅有的三名版主处理的。“通过评论帮助他人是我们真正享受的事情，这也是我们花这么多时间在版块上的原因，”一位因担心法律后果而要求匿名的版主说道。他们补充说，该小组的一名版主“是专业钟表匠”，但其他人只是该领域的业余爱好者。

Are they concerned about the ethical implications of what they are doing? “I’m in the USA, and it is not illegal to buy or own replica watches,” the moderator says. “It is illegal to sell a replica and claim it is genuine. I am very strongly opposed to that. In fact, on the rare occasion that someone mentions more than a passing interest in a replica watch I am wearing, I volunteer that the watch is a replica.” 他们是否担心自己行为的道德影响？“我在美国，购买或拥有复刻表并不违法，”该版主说。“出售复刻表并声称它是正品才是违法的。我强烈反对这种行为。事实上，在极少数情况下，如果有人对我佩戴的复刻表表现出浓厚兴趣，我会主动说明这块表是复刻品。”

Our own replica movement exposed and inspected. It looks a lot like the real deal. Courtesy of Watch Collecting 我们自己的复刻机芯被拆解和检查。它看起来和真品非常相似。图片来源：Watch Collecting

Even a Reddit community with more than a quarter of a million weekly visitors represents a mere fraction of the global fake-watch industry. The Federation of the Swiss Watch Agency has estimated that tens of millions of fake watches are produced every year, dwarfing the number legitimately manufactured by Swiss brands. And, while many super clones sell for bet 即使是一个每周有超过 25 万访问者的 Reddit 社区，也只是全球假表产业的一小部分。瑞士钟表工业联合会估计，每年生产的假表多达数千万块，远远超过了瑞士品牌合法制造的数量。而且，虽然许多“超级复刻”表的售价……