# Narrowly escaped a frankenwatch



## longplay (Sep 27, 2017)

Ended up with a winning bid on Friday that I didn't expect. Liked the look of the watch a suddenly regretted it.

It was a Favre-Leuba Sandow Twin Power.

I should have known something was up as there's quite a few similar looking pieces on eBay at the moment -- a dead giveaway someone's churning out stuff. The seller has 100% rep though and it was coming from the UK.

I don't know why, but yesterday (thankfully before it was sent) I decided I'd really inspect the images to see if I could confirm it was kosher.

The thing that stood out was the movement -- although it said Favre-Leuba on the bridge it wasn't a twin power (tracking down a source of what that movement should look like was hardly straightforward). Looking at the dial I could see the O in Twin Power was slightly larger than the other text too -- something in common with a lot of the listings.

Contacted the seller and was issued a refund no problem, thankfully.

The lack of information on a lot of vintage brands makes it really tough to know whether you're looking at even a legitimate model, let alone re-dials, etc. Are there any good resources for this sort of thing?


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## dobra (Aug 20, 2009)

Vigilance and knowledge paid off. Well done LP.

mike


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## gimli (Mar 24, 2016)

Quite a few Favre Leubas franken or semi-fake coming out of India. They make their way around here and get passed on. Also be careful of the dial and hands and even the case backs which can be from different models.


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## Senninha (Nov 29, 2012)

Well done on picking that up - especially after the transaction was done. Better then than trying to reverse later.

It's pretty worrying not only how many franken / fake watches are around, but how hard they are to tell. I suppose it's part of the challenge and hobby, but some expensive mistakes possible!


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## scottswatches (Sep 22, 2009)

I've built a library of books to help, as internet sources can be suspect - even manufacturers sites can be wrong! I recently got a watch that the makers said came out in the early sixties, but I found adverts for the same watch from 1958.

Favre-Leuba, post 1975 Roamers and Oris watches seem to be the popular duds at the moment


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## ong (Jul 31, 2008)

One reason I gave up collecting vintage watches. While I had some success I also bought some dubious specimens including an IWC with a swapped movement and a badly redialled Pobeda. I reckon that unless you know the original owner any vintage watch can have all sorts of replacement parts of varied originality.


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## longplay (Sep 27, 2017)

scottswatches said:


> Favre-Leuba, post 1975 Roamers and Oris watches seem to be the popular duds at the moment


 Various Rado models seem to be doing the rounds too.


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## mel (Dec 6, 2006)

The problem is compounded by "legitimate" frankens - - like, someone has Dad's much loved family piece which needs a part, the part is unavailable, and so a friendly watch maker fits something which actually gets it working again and the customer is happy. Then the customer passes away and the watch is sold on - - and it's a Franken 

TIMEX can suffer from Frankenising like anything else, but sometimes it's well - - easy, because a good movement will fit many cases, and dials - - simply because inter-changeability was built in at source in the mass production techniques from the originals.


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