Don’t know whether this is useful as an update or not but anyway, it’s current at least.
Recently returned from 2 months working in BKK and my experience in MBK pretty much mirrors what some of the above posters wrote. Although I definitely wouldn’t agree that there is nothing worth buying in MBK. You just have to look harder. It was the same at the end of last year when I was there for 6 weeks.
I trawled all of the rep watch dealers, probably about 20 in total, to see what was on offer and what they could get hold of. I was particularly after two things, a VRF Pirlo and an automatic Montoya Skeleton Daytona, but could have been - no I was - tempted by the right Submariner, Daytona, Yachtmaster or similar.
Bottom line:
There are 2 dealers I would trust, basically because they were truthful, they got me stuff at a decent price and didn’t try to fob crap onto me.
One of the dealers effectively has two shops and you wouldn’t necessarily know that unless you knew they were brother and sister. The brother passes you to his sister if you want anything really decent. She had some interesting stuff I didn’t buy like a DIW Carbon GMT and an AP with a tourbillon (no clue about AP or AP reps but it looked decent if that’s your thing)
The rest sell mainly pretty low end stuff and many try to pass crap off as high quality. They seem to operate as a number of mini-networks. I’m happy to name the dealers if it’s considered ok to do so.
I am not exactly a world authority on this and was just looking for a very narrow range of Rolex models, so the pretty obvious tells for me when checking out a dealer were:
describing anything at all, as Swiss - obviously a lie unless Zurich is now in the PRC
not knowing which factory something was from
not even recognising factory names
not being able to tell the difference between two YMs at different price points
trying to charge 24000baht for the same watch available for 5000baht 2 shops along
not knowing any of the really basic stuff talked about on here like CF bringing out a Daytona, or even that there had been raids in China.
looking blank when asked about movements like 4130 or 3135
telling me a £50 piece of quartz crap was good
trying to tell me it was a great attribute of a (cheap crap fake) Daytona they were selling that the subdials acted as a calendar
telling me they could get an automatic Montoya and then coming back with a quartz one, which I had told them I had already
I ended up coming home with:
A VRF Pirlo for just under £400 - which I think compares favourably with what they were going for at TDs when they were available, I could see before I bought and I didn’t have to pay postage or anything.
A DIW Carbon Daytona which I hadn’t planned on buying but it caught my eye. This is OMF not Noob so has the correct bezel font but also doesn’t have the movement.
A lower end Yachtmaster 126622
A Chanel for a friend (I have no idea about this but he is happy)
Last year I had also bought:
A Noob V4 116500LN Black dial and a VSF 116610LN - delighted to get both of these as it turned out.
An AdeG Barrichello and a Montoya (both quartz, and fun pieces)
A couple of Tags for a friend - I knew very little about these but he was happy
Anyway, make of it what you like.
