[fleece_me]

I have a thread I'd like to start about the (very) underground high quality replica watch scene. No reasonable person would even believe this "scene" exists, but it is a thriving scene full of drama, suspense and mystery. Some interesting things have happened lately and I'd like to post about the scene in general, what seems to make these people (ahem) tick, how the "sourcers" ply their trade, where the watches are made, how they are imported, the recent actions taken by the president of a very high profile super-high-end luxury watch company, the famous and elusive "Maria" (the highest quality and most sought after replica maker of all time). There are even Maria replicas out there and even experts at exposing these fakes of fakes. These people are hard core and it has nothing to do with the replica sites advertised in spam. The best dealers/sourcers don't even have websites.

These are not the $50 canal street type fakes that are peddled through spam websites like replicacenter.com. These people are serious about this stuff and I see a lot of business type parallels between this underground business and the online gaming industry, although one is clearly morally and ethically wrong and the other (poker) is not.

I'd also like to talk about the type of person that would buy a high quality replica and link to some of these underground forums where these very dedicated replica nut-jobs hang out.

The latest developments are interesting and the drama is high. I was a bit captivated and others might be too.