Tag Heuer Real VS Fake

And no you’re definitely not seeing double. One of these watches is actually real, and other is fake but can you guess which one is which. For the more experienced collectors, dealers  and enthusiasts, most of you would have been able to tell quite immediately that the one on the right is in fact the fake. But the ability to do this is something that takes time and experience to be able to get good at. For a lot of beginners and newbies out there, it’s going to be harder to detect which watches are fake, especially when you don’t have a real one to hand to compare it with. I hear a lot of horror stories about people who get caught out buying fake watches from private sellers purely because they just lack the experience and sometimes put too much trust into the seller. Unfortunately, since the whole Coronavirus fiasco, there has been a huge increase in fake watches appearing all over the place. As you can see here, within 30 seconds of searching through eBay we come across a pretty poor example of a fake Aquaracer, and this happens across pretty much all of the private selling platforms. Here again, immediately on Facebook Marketplace, we’ve got a fake Formula One for sale, and after one scroll on Shpock, we have a fake Carrera. Now admittedly these are pretty poor fakes and do appear to be somewhat obvious, but there are still beginners out there that get caught out by some of these listings. But more alarmingly, there are some very good fakes out there and even super clones that catch out even the most experienced of collectors. So we thought that we just made this little video for the less experienced buyers out there just to give a few pointers on what to look for when trying to determine whether or not what you’re looking at is the real deal. But of course, if you do want to be absolutely sure that what you’re getting is a legitimate piece, we always recommend buying only from reputable dealers like ourselves and then if by any chance something does go wrong, you will definitely be protected.

So First things first, even though we clearly knew that this watch was a fake, we did still check the serial number on the TAG Heuer database at tag.HR/warranty, which is actually available for everyone to access. And lo and behold, no search results appeared and by the way I will do a separate video for you. So after doing that it’s now time to have a look at the real watch and the fake one side by side, just so that we can get a more in depth look and feel for comparison. Now again, at first glance side-by-side these watches do have a fair few similarities and as I said before, to someone that doesn’t have a good enough experience level or side by side comparison of the watches, it can be a bit tricky to tell the difference so the first thing that we want to look at here is the movement of the watch, and usually this is the most tell-tale sign of whether or not or what is legitimate. And most professionals will tell you to simply just take the back off the watch and have a look at the inner workings to gauge your level of authenticity. But as we know, most beginners and people outside of the trade don’t have these tools available. So how can we determine the movement quality just from an outside visual perspective as a beginner?

So with this watch in particular to determine the movement quality from an outside perspective we have to do a bit of research on what movement the watch is meant to have, which we know is a quartz. If you’re unsure as to what movement your watch is meant to have, have a look on the TAG Heuer website, or if it’s a discontinued piece, have a Google of the specs and it will pop up somewhere. So now we know what movement the watch is meant to have, how does a quartz watch actually move? Well a quartz watch has a ticking hand movement rather than sweeping hand. Which when looking at these watches we can see that they both have that little ticking hand going around. However, something is seriously not right here, and that is that the fake watch is actually ticking at the hour sub dial rather than the second sub dial. So there’s a major red flag here immediately. In fact, the seconds sub dial on the fake watch is completely stuck. It doesn’t even move whatsoever. Unfortunately things do get worse for the fake when we start the chronograph. As you can see here, the chronograph hand does move, but it does so in more of 1/2 tick half sweep motion rather than a full on tick motion like What a true Quartz piece does and along with that, the second hand still refuses to move and the minute sub dial is very inaccurate and gives up counting after 2 minutes, whereas on a legitimate piece everything works like well, clockwork. Also notice here how the fake watch looks slightly more foggy and this is because we’re looking through glass and just glass rather than sapphire crystal like what we’re looking through on the real watch. So the clarity is not as good on the fake.

So let’s move on now to the dial features and straight away we can see a big difference between the colouring on the logos. The fake one is way too brightly coloured and we could just about see that the writing is slightly more squashed and out of proportion compared to the real one. So on the real one, the writing is very crisp and perfectly in proportion with the outlines. However, I can see how the colouring here would be slightly confusing as the tag logo that we so used to seeing is actually the one with the lighter colouring rather than the dark. We’ve got the patterning on the sub dials and as you can see on the real Watch we’ve got an intricate concentric circle pattern, whereas on the fake it is just plain. As a rule of thumb, most fakes will miss off the sort of intricate details off because see here that even the hands aren’t as refined as the real one. And this is because it’s not really worth the time and extra costs for the fake producers. Although I must say the printing of the numbers on the fake is actually alarmingly quite convincing. So Next up we’ve got the numeral markers, which at first glance do look quite similar, but at a deeper look we can see that the fake ones are way too long in some places and don’t have the same design in others. But apart from this, again, they are quite alarmingly convincing. Despite the very minor differences like slight changes to thickness. Next we have a more obvious one and that is the date window.

As we can see here, the date window on the real tag lines up perfectly with the 20 past marker and it’s in full proportion, whereas the one on the fake isn’t. At a more deeper look, we can also see the date window on the fake is more rectangular than a square one that we find on the real tag watches and the number isn’t greatly aligned in the box. Now with the legitimate watches, the numbering is always completely in proportion and pretty much dead centre. Next up we’ve got the wording on the dial and to be honest, the real versus the fake here are not a million miles apart. But for the eagle eyed out there we can see the slight differences in font style. Font style that tag use is always more sharply cut, making it appear more precision like than what we see on the more rounded fakes. The next small differences in the hands, and again in all fairness, these ones aren’t 1,000,000 miles apart. Apart from the slight differences in lume thickness, the fake one even has a facet running down the middle like the real one. The real tell-tale sign only really comes into place when we look at the slapdash pin holes in the chronograph hands and the red tip painting that’s clearly been done on the cheap. Now as a rule of thumb, hands on all tags should look precision cut with lume situated equally all over and vibrant red tips on the chronograph hands with absolutely no slapdashery. Speaking of the lume most professionals will advise that one of the major signs of a Fake watch is the lack of lume, either by having none at all or by being extremely dull, which in most circumstances is correct. However, on the more recent fakes that I’ve seen, they seems to be catching up with the lume issue, including this one now as we can see here, lume on this fake actually does glow pretty much as brightly as what it does on the real one, however, it’s just a slightly different shade of green. Again, as a rule of thumb, a real tag watch will have a more lime green glow rather than a common green, and the Lume on a real tag will stay present for a fair amount of time depending on how much charge it has. And it’s likely that the fake one will lose its charge quite quickly, on some occasions within well under a minute.

Moving on now to the case, things get a lot worse for our fake tag on the bottom, and the poor producer seems to have completely got the finish wrong and opted for a polished finish rather than a brushed one like what we get on the real deal. And the same again happens on the crown side and actually gets worse when we see the cheap plastic chronograph pushers and crown. now it’s pretty much a given that the pushers and crown are always made of high grade steel and in this case the coated with high grade PVD coating just to make them black. And one other important thing to notice here is how the crown guard is very squared off on the fake one rather than being perfectly fluid like what we see on the real one.

Now to the lugs. And we can see another subtle difference with how the real tag is quite strictly and precisely cut. Whereas the fake one is a more rounded design with little space between the bezel. But at least they got the finish right here I suppose.

Now As for the actual design of the bezel, we can see here that the real one has got a more smooth high grade finish whereas the fake one doesn’t, and both feel very different to touch. Now obviously you can’t touch them right now, but to describe it, you could definitely feel that the fake one is made from a sort of cheaper material. We can also see that the numerals protrude way too much on the fake. And the grooves on the bezel aren’t as refined or deep cut as what they are on the real one. And to be frank, the numerals on the fake watch are very tacky looking, they are way too rounded and off proportion.

Moving on now to the strap and again at first glance these two do look quite similar, but of course on closer inspection there are some giveaways that we can spot now with these straps. In particular, one of the biggest giveaways is actually the touch and I know of course you guys can’t touch these straps. But just to let you know, on a real TAG Heuer watch with a rubber strap, it will always be a lot softer than what it will be on a fake. As for the visuals, we can see here that the flank on the real watches a lot deeper cut than on the fake, and also the buckle holes are more professionally cut. As for the clasp, pretty self-explanatory here as the fake one looks absolutely horrendous and is way too thick and rounded in comparison to the real one. As for the strap holder, we can actually see quite a big difference in the way that each one has been cut and especially here we can see how rough and gritty the rubber is on the fake tag as opposed to the real one.

And last but not least, we’ve got the case back, which again does look quite similar at first glance. But when we have a deeper look side by side, we can clearly see that the fake is way thicker than the real one. I actually forgot to mention it before, but the diameter of the fake one is actually just slightly bigger than the real one. And again as I said at the beginning of the video, if you’re unsure of the specs of your watch, just have a Google search on the tag website and you should be able to pull them up. On the back, we can also see that the checkerboard motif of the fake is a lot less refined, leaving sloppy mistakes everywhere, and the font isn’t as precisely engraved as it is on the real one.

Now you might also have notice that we’ve actually blurred at the serial information on both of these watches, which to be honest all dealers should be doing to prevent fraudulent copies. But just as a top tip, if your tag doesn’t have the serial number present on the back, then it is most likely a fake. And there we have it guys. I hope that you found this little guide somewhat useful and we know that this watch isn’t the best, or most convincing fake out there. And unfortunately, there are some worryingly super accurate clones floating about. But we just wanted to give a little helping hand and hopefully help some good people from getting scammed out of their hard earned money, there’s nothing cool about buying or selling fakes goods and I guarantee you that no matter how accurate they look, they will never hold up or last as long as the real ones.