The High Level

Over the last year, our watch operations team has noticed a surge in rejections of inauthentic TAG Heuer models. This was made evident in our recent 2024 Bezel Report, where we reported that 34% of our rejected models were TAGs, a meaningful step up from the first half of 2024, when they only accounted for 11%. 

The important note is that these are not just your ordinary fakes but watches that our team would classify as “super fakes” (we’ll go into detail in the examples below). These counterfeits use the identical movements that the real watches use, they’re close to identically finished, and, in many cases, have real serial numbers taken from authentic examples. 

This leads to an in-authentic counterfeit that looks and functions almost identically (and, in many cases, identically) to the original examples. 

The Specifics

As mentioned above, the TAG counterfeits are becoming more convincing than ever. We’ve been able to isolate the counterfeit TAGs down to 2 specific model lines: the Aquaracer and the Formula One. To break down the specifics as to why, it’s important to break down the watches by section.

The Movement

Authentic examples of these models are powered by Calibre 7 and Calibre 5 movements,  generic Swiss calibers produced by Sellita or ETA, and finished by TAG Heuer. In counterfeit watches from other brands, the movement is typically a similar base caliber, like these from Sellita, and finished in an attempt to look like the real caliber from the manufacturer. Because other brands often utilize their own in-house calibers, these are easily spotted as fakes even without magnification and also from a performance perspective. However, because TAG does not manufacture their own in-house movements for these models, the same base movements that TAG leverages in their authentic watches are used in these TAG clones.

Under close inspection, while the base movement was correct, many of the engravings, finishing, serial numbering, and movement graining failed to meet TAG Heuer’s quality standards.

The Case and Dial

On the surface, these watches were nearly indistinguishable from the real thing, featuring externally accurate case finishing, dial detailing, and luminous applications. These specific models do not have the same level of detailed finishing as many of the other TAG models, so matching the finishing almost identically is much more achievable from a counterfeit watchmaker.

The Serial and Warranty

In many cases, in-authentic or counterfeit watches have some type of inconsistency with the serial engraving, the serial on the warranty card, and the serial in the brand’s database. Typically they don’t add up and it’s one of the most obvious indications that there is something nefarious about the watch. In the case of many of the rejected TAGs, they actually were engraved with batches of serials taken from authentic watches that were activated in the TAG serial database, thus appearing to have genuine warranties from the brand. 

Our process

As we’ve mentioned before, our in-house authentication is the strictest in the industry. In 2024, we rejected 29% of the watches attempted to be sold on Bezel. We obsess over building trust with our customers and delivering peace of mind throughout the entire watch-buying process. 

Each watch passes through the hands of multiple Bezel experts as it goes through all the authentication steps: a complete external inspection, diagnostic/performance testing, a detailed movement inspection, an accessory inspection, a condition inspection, and finally, a test to ensure the watch was never reported stolen. A watch can be rejected for several reasons, ranging from inconsistent condition reporting to counterfeit parts.

Our authentication team is constantly looking for patterns in the authentication data. When a specific reference is frequently rejected during our authentication flow, like the TAG series mentioned above, our team makes a few intentional changes to reinforce our already robust process: 

• We restrict the set of sellers that can list this watch to only those with the highest trust ratings (multiple successful transactions and unique access to authentic examples of that model)
• We amass a library of authentic examples to compare against. We have a library available for most top models, but we ensure that we have all variants of a flagged reference available. We add this on top of our already rigorous authentication process to double check the work.
• We look for patterns from sellers—any sellers that sell an inauthentic example are immediately flagged by our authentication team
• We audit any relevant previous transactions—if a seller is flagged for attempting to sell an inauthentic watch, our team goes back and audits any previous transactions linked to that seller

Once again, trust is everything to us, so it’s always our process to go above and beyond to ensure each buyer is completely protected.

As always, feel free to reach out to our team if you have any questions at all.

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About Bezel

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