As I said before in this topic, it seems obvious to me that 99% of mortals will never detect a Rep. However, I started this topic to focus on that remaining 1%. Have you ever come across someone who has detected that your watch is a replica? Do you think that if you had frequent contact with a collector, he could detect it? Here's the real question.
Otherwise, it is obvious that the common moral will only judge if a watch is Gen or Rep based on the other socioeconomic aspects related to your person: your trade, your clothes, your car, your age.
Depends what you mean by ‘collector’.
I know a few people with small to large collections of very nice watches, and honestly, there’s no way they would notice a Rep if it was good.
They like owning the watches and they like having a collection, but there’s no way they know every little detail about all their watches, or indeed other watches.
People on forums like this go on about ‘rounded hour markers’ and stuff like that, and I personally wouldn’t even notice things like that, even on close examination.
As I said in my post earlier, I have a collection of Gen and when I hold my Gen GMT next to my Rep GMF GMT I honestly cannot tell, even looking really close in good light. I just can’t see any differences, and that’s me actively looking for differences.
I believe it will be way less than 1% of the population who will ever notice, especially if all they can do is look at it on your wrist from a distance.
Sure if they asked you to hand it over and started looking at it with a loupe they may notice, but there is virtually zero chance of that ever happening.
With one exception: Wearing a cheap £80-100 ‘AAA’ Rep that you bought off a guy on the beach selling sunglasses, yeah, expect to be called out on that by someone with a keen eye.
But even then, I bought one of those AAA Reps on holiday once, and gave it to a friend of mine as a joke because he always wanted a Sub, and he wears it all the time! Over the last 2 years of wearing it, no one has ever said anything other than ‘nice watch’ even people I know who have collections! No one has ever noticed that I know of.