So much of the joy in watch collecting comes from the hunt, pursuing the rarest and most interesting horological oddities from around the world – but rarity can often be a double-edged sword. In the case of Phillips auction house, a rare so-called “double signed” cheap fake Rolex Daytona with an alleged fake dial stamp from the Swiss retailer Beyer has been sold for close to US$100,000 (AU$144,251), more than three times its value had the dial stamp not been present.
If you’re wondering what a double-signed watch is, here’s a quick summary (or if you’re really curious, this is a great in-depth resource). In decades gone by, brands such as perfect replica Rolex and Patek Philippe would allow their most important retailers to feature their own logo alongside that of the watchmaker, resulting in the much-hyped 2021 Tiffany & Co Patek Philippe Nautilus, but also dozens of other references, with timepieces from luxury fake Rolex featuring the logos of Cartier, Tiffany & Co and others.
In recent years, the interest in double-signed watches has skyrocketed as collectors searched for increasingly rare examples of popular replica watches for sale, while also falling in love with the history lesson of watch industry relationships that each timepiece offers. Where there are vast sums of money involved, however, so too come the less scrupulous. When you can multiply the value of a copy watch by simply adding a stamp to the dial in the correct place, it’s understandable that some have found the possible fortune too irresistible to ignore.
Horological provocateur and investigator Jose Pereztroika recently published a blog post about the Swiss made fake Rolex Daytona in question, which he identified as having first been sold by Phillips in late 2018 in Hong Kong, before it resurfaced at the auction house’s ready-to-buy boutique Phillips Perpetual in May 2021. After having his interest in Beyer-signed watches piqued, Pereztroika started to question the authenticity of Beyer-signed Rolex watches made after the 1950s, so he reached out to Beyer directly to ask about the high quality replica Rolex Daytona from 1992 that Phillips sold.