Read below... Pricing is going much lower on a number of luxury brands including vintage watches worth millions due to the fact that some of the best known components manufacturers in Switzerland have been caught building counterfeits of even the highest priced vintage watches along with new Rolexes and others.
Franck Muller: the plot thickens Nov 21 - 07:14 PM
Two Franck Muller employees arrested in Jaquet cloned-watch scandal probe. One set free in state of shock.
Franck's uncle accused of stealing watch parts and plans.
Franck still missing but believed to be alive.
The few awake readers of this forum will recall Watchbore's stupefying account of the Jaquet scandal in which a respected watch entrepreneur was dragged away in chains on charges ranging from armed robbery to forgery, along with 11 others allegedly implicated in a gang of bent watchmakers who are flooding the market with cloned watches.
A few others will have probably successfully forgotten Watchbore's truly epic inside story of the struggle between Franck Muller and his Armenian partner Vartan Sirmakes in which the watchmaking wonder-boy demands the immediate winding up of Watchland and quits the premises. One of Watchbore's most trusted sources has since confessed that Franck is living incognito in Geneva with a lady friend and that he only emerges surrounded by a posse of lawyers. It will be remembered that the quarrel between the two men involved jobs for the respective members of the Armenian and Muller clans.
Watchbore can now reveal that Franck Muller's uncle, former head of production at Watchland, is behind bars trying to explain away the large number of Franck Muller watch parts, components, watches under assembly and plans discovered at his home. As soon as nephew Franck walked out, the uncle, whose unpopularity was supposed to have been matched only by his incompetence, was fired.
The investigations are revealing an underground traffic in cloned watches, made in watch factories, including, it is alleged, Jaquet, using stolen plans and parts destined for the real watch and indistinguishable from it. They are even able to make and age watches of 1930s and 1940s vintage, according to a usually reliable informant.
Already this is having an effect on the auction market where Patek Philippe, notably, is losing its lustre as the blue-chip stock. Many of the important pieces and collector's watches failed to sell at Antiquorum's October sales in Geneva.
It is now becoming impossible to tell whether a branded watch offered for sale is of authorized or unauthorized production even if an authorized dealer sells it. It would be impossible to guess how many of the watches traded on the internet are clones.
Watchbore has always contended in the face of considerable apathy that a watch is an unsuitable object to be made by a brand. It should be made by a watchmaker.
Watchbore
Allison
New York, New York
U.S.A.
0 comments