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Ha ha, dodgy con man trying to sell me fake watches


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I was sitting in may car in a car park and a guy in a new C class Mercedes pulls up next to me. He says he is the regional sales manager for Mercedes. Instantly, I'm thinking, why are you driving a C180, the regional sales manager would be driving an E or S class, not a bottom of the range C class.

He says, when Mercedes sell a new car to someone they give them an expensive designer watch and he has not given them to the customers and now has a boot full of expensive designer watches that he wants to sell cheap to make himself a few extra quid.

Now I'm thinking that the regional sales manager for Mercedes should earn a very good salary, so why would he risk his job making a few extra pounds selling these watches.

He offered me a £4,000 Breitling for £100. I asked to have a look at it, it felt like plastic and was very lightweight. I don't know a lot about expensive watches but I know enough to know that that wasn't one.

I said I'm not interested and he said that the watches haven't cost him anything, so I should make him an offer. I offered him £15 for the fake Breitling which he didn't accept. Oh well, no harm done. I just hope he doesn't manage to fool anyone else into parting with £100 for a watch that probably cost him a tenner.

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As someone who is into watches,,

biggest obvious thing is if they tick they are a quartz, not many swiss watches have a quartz movement, they have either a manual wind or automatic movement, which creates the sweeping seconds. You can also find replicas with auto movements and they are usually of a higher price, search the internet hard enough and you can find replica sites that can be as respectable as you could hope an illegal replica peddler could be lol. The biggest tell on these is coloured screws, no regulator on the balance wheel (not easy if its a solid backed watch) and if you listen to the movement running its 6 beats per second instead of 8, most genuine movements are 8bps.

Also as you state, a real breitling would not feel light and plasticky either they are quite heavy for watches.

Re the mercedes manager part, if it was me id request the new C63 AMG coupe, awesome car :-)

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I had an experience almost exactly the same. Same story. The guy was in a 4x4 merc. We didn't take the bait but we saw him again in the same car park trying to sell to someone else on a different day so as he left we followed him for a few miles to make him paranoid and to get his number plate. It got to the point where he pulled over in a farm entracne on an A road to let us pass because he knew he was being followed. Funny thing was we were in a blue 56 plate vectra.

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