Tag: Fake Watches With Tourbillons

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Introducing Swiss Fake Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Concept Frosted Gold Flying Tourbillon

Quick Take

There are few watchmakers who can go all-out like best Audemars Piguet replica can go all-out. Some brands specialize in making high complications in-house; others are known for their eye-catching dial and case designs; others yet are defined by the ways in which they push the boundaries of what modern watchmaking can be. AP can do all three, and when they bring these approaches together into a single watch, the results are astounding. The new Royal Oak Concept Frosted Gold Flying Tourbillon is just that. When I first saw a photo, I uttered an audible “whoa” at my MacBook.

The watch starts with AP’s smaller 38.5mm Concept case (which we’ve seen used here before) and gives it a totally new treatment with the frosted finish developed in collaboration with jeweler Carolina Bucci. The top of the bezel and the tops of the sculpted lugs have this distinctive finish, while the edge of the bezel is polished and the sides of the case are brushed. This mix of finishes is really striking, and I’d imagine that it gives the watch a ton of visual interest in the metal. Taking things even further is the multi-step blue dial that descends into the case, focusing your eye on the flying tourbillon at six o’clock, with its carriage made of concentric ovals and studded with a 19 brilliant-cut diamonds. You have your choice of a white-gold case or a pink-gold case, though both have the same dial and tourbillon treatment.

The blue dial fake watch has blue strap.
Blue Strap Fake Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Concept Watch

One of my favorite parts of the watch, though, is the finish on the reverse of the caliber 2964, developed with Renaud & Papi (formerly APRP and a subsidiary of AP, making the movement “in-house”). We get another echo of that concentric oval pattern from the dial and the tourbillon cage, with raised, polished rings standing out against a frosted, gunmetal-colored ground. It would be easy to be tempted by ornate, high-contrast finishing for a watch like this, but I like that AP decided to tone it down a bit and go for something a bit more subtle.

The perfect copy Royal Oak Concept Frosted Gold Flying Tourbillon is only available through Audemars Piguet’s boutiques, which is a trend we’ve seen with many of AP’s most exciting releases over the last few years. Pre-orders are open now, and the watches will start delivering this fall. This is not a limited edition; however, production will be limited, and I’d imagine this won’t be the easiest watch to score.

The 38.5 mm replica watch is designed for men.
38.5 MM Replica Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Concept Watch
Initial Thoughts

This is not a watch for everyone. If you find the Concept case to be a little too aggressive, if you don’t like diamonds on your watches, or if that frosted gold finish bugs you, I don’t think I’m going to be able to convince you to reconsider. And that’s ok. It’s great, in fact. The purpose of the Concept watches is to give AP a place to experiment and try new things, to push their technical skills and aesthetic boundaries. Personally, I dig this watch, but I would totally understand if you rolled your eyes when you saw it.

Where I think things get really interesting is when you place this watch next to something like the [Re]master01. These are two polar opposite expressions of Audemars Piguet’s core competencies, and I think they create a nice dialog with one another about what modern watchmaking can be. If all we do is look to the past, there’s no future; if we don’t respect the past and try to draw on its best lessons, we might leave some great things behind. This is where AP, in my opinion, excels.

As far as the nuts-and-bolts of the Concept Frosted Gold Flying Tourbillon go, I don’t have too much to complain about. I could wish for a version without diamonds or a version with different hands, but that would be a totally different watch altogether. Otherwise, I’ve always liked the frosted gold finish, and I think the 38.5mm Concept case is flat-out awesome (the larger Concept watches are way too big for me, so I’m just happy there’s a Concept case I could actually enjoy). Even more than the movement finishing I mentioned above, my favorite part of this quality fake watch is that new dial. It’s tough to get a full handle on it in these press images, so stay tuned for live photos as soon as I can get myself into a boutique to see this up-close.

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Introducing Swiss Fake Omega De Ville Central Tourbillon Numbered Edition, The First Master Chronometer Omega Tourbillon

When most of us think of perfect Omega replica, the first thing to come to mind is probably the Speedmaster, followed closely by the Seamaster and other tough, technically advanced sports and tool watches. Something that probably does not readily spring to mind is the tourbillon, although it probably should – Omega made some of the very first generation of tourbillon wristwatches, in a time (the 1940s) when the tourbillon was not a visual entertainment for the titillation of horological enthusiasts, but was instead at the cutting edge of experiments in producing better chronometry. Omega’s first generation of tourbillon wristwatches virtually never appear for sale or at auctions, but when one did, at Phillips in 2017, it hammered for the rather breathtaking sum of CHF 1,428,500.
The tourbillon wristwatches made in the 1940s used the caliber 30 I, and they were not made for sale – rather, they were intended to be entered in the observatory timing competitions. They had tourbillons which rotated, rather unusually, once every seven-and-a-half minutes, and they were, in their day, the last word in the pursuit of cutting-edge chronometry. Today, Omega has introduced another milestone in both its own history of tourbillon production and in the history of tourbillon watches in general – the new Omega De Ville Tourbillon Numbered Edition, which is, in addition to being the latest version of the De Ville Central Tourbillon, the first to be Master Chronometer certified and capable of resisting magnetic fields of up to at least 15,000 gauss. This latest version of the Omega central tourbillon has a three-day power reserve and a co-axial escapement, as well.
The central tourbillon was first introduced in the De Ville family of watches by Omega in 1994, and it was both a remarkable achievement and a statement of purpose for one of Switzerland’s largest and most important watch firms. Omega had emerged from the Quartz Crisis having lost much of its internal expertise in movement manufacturing, but the company was determined to distinguish itself in this area again. The De Ville Central Tourbillon of 1994 signified its resolve to make the technical excellence of watchmaking at Omega a theme for its future as well as its past.

The 18k gold fake watch has tourbillon.
18K Gold Fake Omega De Ville Watch

The original copy De Ville Central Tourbillon, 1994, as seen at Christie’s Hong Kong in 2018, with the original central tourbillon caliber 1170.
The original De Ville Central Tourbillon was, as they say, just what it says on the tin – a wristwatch in which the tourbillon cage is placed at the center of the movement, rather than at a more customary location (often at 6:00). The project began in 1991 and, according to a very in-depth article on PuristsPro.com from 2007, was codenamed Project 33 (P33) by Omega’s Moritz Grimm and André Beyner (an interesting bit of trivia mentioned in the article was that Beyner gave special projects odd numbers starting from the year of his birth in 1927; P33 was his fourth such project). The team had just three years to produce the watch as it was meant to debut in time for Omega’s 100th anniversary in 1994.
The single biggest technical problem was that the hands of a watch are, of course, normally mounted on pivots placed at the center of the movement, and the location of the central tourbillon made this impossible. A solution was found, however, which was to mount the indicators for the hours and minutes on two sapphire disks, which were driven on their peripheries from gearing under the case bezel (a solution similar in some respects to the Cartier mystery clocks).
The project was, ultimately, completed in time for Omega’s 100th anniversary and was released in a De Ville case, with the central tourbillon caliber 1170. The watch was re-released, this time with a COSC chronometer certification, in 2002. The U.S. patent for the central tourbillon was granted in 1995 (no. 5,608,694) and expired in 2015, but central tourbillons remain extremely rare (one notable example, using a different technical approach from Omega, is the Haldimann H1 Central Flying Tourbillon).

The Sedna® 18k gold copy watch has tourbillon.
Sedna® 18K Gold Copy Omega De Ville Watch

The new fake De Ville Tourbillon Numbered Edition uses a new central tourbillon movement, which keeps the same basic architecture and some of the same basic technical solutions as the caliber 1170, but which is also, in many respects, a new movement. This new movement is the three-day central tourbillon caliber 2640.
De-cased and viewed from the dial side, the system for driving the disks carrying the hour and minute indicators can be seen. The actual driving gears are at the one and two o’clock positions, and there are three retaining guides for the two disks at twelve, four, and eight o’clock; these have two recesses for the two disks. The keyless works for winding and setting occupy most of the space at three o’clock, with a quite beautifully shaped skeletonized cover plate (with integrated detent spring, which is the small, club-like projection at more or less exactly three o’clock). Though it’s a shame this particular element isn’t visible in the finished watch, it’s one of those hidden pieces of craftsmanship which historically has lent so much interest to fine watchmaking.
The two mainspring barrels are prominently visible in recesses in the back of the movement; they are visually connected by an arc-shaped bridge which also acts as the sector for the power reserve. (While the original 1994 model was self-winding, the new model is hand-wound). Based on the placement of the jewels, the barrels appear to run in series, with the one on the right driving the actual going train for the central tourbillon (the jewels and pivots for the train wheels are located under the bridge that makes up the upper third of the movement). Plates and bridges are all in Sedna gold, and the movement in its design and finishing recalls both traditional fine finishing techniques, as well as more modern materials and approaches. The use of a frosted gold finish, rather than more conventional Geneva stripes is, to my eye, a bit reminiscent of the English pocket watch tradition. I don’t know if this was intended by Omega as a subtle homage to George Daniels, the inventor of the co-axial escapement, but it certainly gives the movement a very dignified appearance, contrasting as it does with the large jewels and highly polished steel-work.
This is the first Omega central tourbillon to be Master Chronometer certified, and Omega has succeeded in creating a tourbillon which will continue to function when exposed to extremely high magnetic fields (the minimum resistance for Master Chronometer certified watches is 15,000 gauss). The carriage for the tourbillon is made of ceramised titanium, with the entire movement running in 50 jewels. The one-minute carriage also functions as the seconds hand for the watch.
This is a quite major piece of news, albeit in the quite small (relatively speaking) world of high-end horology. The De Ville Central Tourbillon marked an historic moment when it debuted in 1994 for Omega’s centennial, and it remains one of the most groundbreaking tourbillon watches of all time, representing, as it does, a combination of great visual interest and very clever technical watchmaking. The original brainchild of Moritz Grimm and André Beyner has now been brought very much up to date with Master Chronometer certification and a co-axial escapement. It’s a watch I hope very much to be able to see in person at some point this year.