I remember back before I found this forum and others like it. I was saving up money for one of those "Swiss" replicas for $1k from one of the scam sites. I was SOOO happy to have found legit info on that crap before I bought one.
That was about 5 or 6 years ago. I bought my fair share of various watches from trusted dealers since then. Most of what I've bought has been near the top quality-wise of what was available at the time because I didn't want to either get called out or regret the purchase... and plus getting a top notch rep back then could be had for $200-300 at most.
Despite not having been that long ago, a lot of things have changed since then. Even some of the most trusted dealers have come and gone. Some of the tactics used by TD's back then were not that far off from what was on those scam sites. Movements weren't always what was stated. Endlinks weren't solid gold. Now a lot of these myths have been proven false. Despite this, some persist... talk of 1:1 reps, etc.
Another thing that's changed is that the prices have gone way up. The "lower" quality (but still decent) reps have gone from $65 to being around $100-$150 or so. Not a big deal. The top quality reps, however, have jumped to $400, $500, $800 or more. Don't get me wrong... you can still get excellent reps for $250. But an $800 rep from a TD was nearly unheard of just a few years ago.
Personally, I don't know where this is going to end. Maybe it's flattened out, but I don't think so. Prices will probably still go up. After all, if people in this market are still willing to routinely pony up $475 for what might be a dirty and questionable movement in a watch that often has subpar QC... why would they stop raising prices?
Don't get me wrong, I don't blame them one bit. I don't blame the factories or the dealers. Why would they leave money on the table? Supply and demand. If we don't like it, we have to stop buying. But that's not going to happen... because we're addicts.
The bottom line is that, yes, we are spending a LOT of money on "fake" watches. But it's something that we want, so we buy.
Fortunately for me, a lot of the high priced reps happen to be asian 7750 movements. I haven't had that many 7750 movement watches, but I did own a few. Not a one of them worked perfectly... the seconds were jerky, the chronos didn't reset, etc.. I either sold them or had to get them serviced to get them to work well (and then ended up selling them afterward). So I tend to shy away from them now.
In the end, I guess that it has a couple of eventual outcomes. First, the market could level off and prices will stabilize. Or it could just continue to go up. The worst option would be that the Chinese government ends up finding a way to really crack down on the production of reps. That would make it extremely hard to get one... the used rep market would go way up and new ones would skyrocket in price. Ultimately, as China matures as an economy (somehow being a completely capitalistic market in a communist country), I think that this result will eventually happen.
The US went through the same industrial growing pains 50-100 years ago... the only difference is the level of technology around now. Back then, it was dirty and hazardous conditions in steel mills and machining factories. Now, there are sweat-shop conditions in factories in China. Right now, it's what we Americans call the "Wild West" (referring to what it was like ~150 years ago before there was much law in the western half of the country)... but as this facet of their economy advances, I would bet that the number of "fakes" (watches, clothing, drugs, etc.) that come out of that country will drop.
So... let's buy what we want and can afford, not buy what we don't or can't, and just enjoy our hobby while it's still around. While I agree that pricing is getting a little out of control, if we dwell on how much we spend, then we're never going to enjoy ourselves.
