Where to start
If you are about to buy a specific watch, go straight to the brand tells: the fake Rolex Submariner walkthrough or the Royal Oak equivalent. If you are buying from a marketplace listing, read the Chrono24 verification checklist first and the eight seller questions second. If you are deciding whether an app is the right tool at all, the services comparison is the honest version, and WatchRadar vs Entrupy goes deeper on the single closest alternative.
The brand-by-brand reference material lives outside the blog, in the brand guides — one page per maker, covering the specific tells worth checking on Rolex, Audemars Piguet, Patek Philippe, Omega, Cartier, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Tudor, Breitling, TAG Heuer, IWC, Panerai and Hublot. To work out what a watch is before checking it, start with how to identify a watch from a photo.
Every post
- How to find a watch’s reference and serial number — 2026-09-27
Where each brand puts the reference and the serial (between the lugs, on the caseback, inside it or only on the papers), and how to read them without opening the watch. - Rolex serial number lookup: date your Rolex by year — 2026-09-27
The letter-prefix chart from R (1987) to G (2010), what the random serials since late 2010 mean, and what a serial can and cannot tell you. - How much is my watch worth? A collector’s valuation guide — 2026-09-27
What moves a watch’s price (reference, condition, box and papers, service history) and how to read an estimated value range next to an asking price. - How to spot a fake Rolex Daytona: 9 tells — 2026-09-27
Chronograph behaviour, screw-down pushers, the tachymeter bezel, the rehaut and the plain caseback, checked against the generation the watch claims to be. - How to spot a fake Rolex GMT-Master II: 9 tells — 2026-09-27
The two-colour bezel transition, the 24-hour hand, the independent jumping hour, the left-handed Sprite and how Jubilee and Oyster bracelets are built. - How to spot a fake Omega Speedmaster: 9 tells — 2026-09-27
Hesalite or sapphire, printed or applied logo, the step dial and minute track in thirds on calibre 3861, the dot over 90 and the seahorse caseback. - How to spot a fake Patek Philippe Nautilus: 9 tells — 2026-09-27
The embossed horizontal dial, the porthole case ears, the calibre behind the display back, the Patek Philippe Seal and the papers that matter most. - How to spot a fake Rolex Submariner — the 12 tells that always give it away — 2026-04-28
The longest piece on the site. Runs through cyclops magnification, rehaut engraving, datewheel typography, bezel pearl seating and bracelet end-links, in the order a counterfeit usually fails them. - How to spot a fake Audemars Piguet Royal Oak — 2026-04-25
Why tapisserie depth and bezel-screw rotation catch fakes that the silhouette does not, and how to light a Royal Oak dial so the pattern can actually be read. - Buying a watch on Chrono24 — a step-by-step verification checklist — 2026-04-22
The photo set to request, the seller signals worth weighting, how escrow changes your exposure, and the point in the conversation where walking away is the correct move. - Watch authentication services compared: Entrupy, Beckett, in-person, and where WatchRadar fits — 2026-04-19
What each option costs, what it can physically see, how long it takes, and which of them a serious buyer will actually accept as evidence. WatchRadar is the photo-based identifier in the line-up, not an authenticator. - What's actually inside a watch analysis report? — 2026-04-16
Field by field: what a useful report records, what WatchRadar’s Analysis Report does and does not claim, and why a verification page matters more than a printed logo. - Why a 5-angle scan beats a single photo for checking a watch — 2026-04-13
The technical argument for multi-angle capture: which tells are simply invisible in a single frame, and why parallax and raking light do most of the work. - Pre-purchase inspection: 8 questions to ask any watch seller — 2026-04-10
Eight questions, what a good answer sounds like, and what each evasive answer usually means. Useful whether or not you scan the watch. - Reseller's playbook: a consignment triage pipeline with iPhone-only tools — 2026-04-07
Turning intake, photo triage, documentation and listing into a repeatable per-watch process one person can run from a phone, with a watchmaker still opening the high-value pieces. - Inside the WatchRadar dossier: what the AI actually looks at — 2026-04-04
A walk through each region the analysis looks at, how the confidence level is expressed, and the part most write-ups skip: what the dossier cannot see. - The economics of fake watches in 2026, and why checking is now table stakes — 2026-04-01
Why counterfeit quality tracks the secondary-market premium, which references are therefore most attacked, and what that means for private-sale risk.
A note on what we will not publish
No post here guarantees that a watch is genuine, and none is a substitute for a watchmaker opening a caseback on a high-value purchase. WatchRadar itself identifies watches and flags risk signals from photos; it does not authenticate them, and it cannot see inside the case. Where a claim is brand-documented — a certification scheme, a warranty format change, a reference transition — it is stated as such; where it is a pattern we observe in scans, it is described that way. Counterfeit quality moves, so posts get corrected rather than quietly left to age.