A number of people here are aware that I have been caught out a few times trying to buy a "proper" vintage Omega Seamster 300, I'm sorted now but did get burned a couple of times along the way.
The classic signs of a fake are easy to spot, but in all my research I hadn't seen really good comparison shots on hands (for instance), so I thought it may be useful to share some of what I've learnt and hopefully help others to not make the same mistakes as I.
The first thing to check is the caseback - you're looking for a nice flat-top to the "A" in Waterproof - like this one:
The cases are a different shape, but I think the newer cases may be more like the fake case in this shot, which is the one at the bottom:
The case profile is just different - look at this shot and you'll get the idea:
Fake is on the left...
The lugs are different (much thicker on the fake) The bezel is quite a good copy of a modern bezel (looking at the one of the Cousins web site), but the fake crystal has no Omega symbol (although this may not be present on a genuine watch if the crystal was changed for a non-Omega example).
Note that the dial on the fake on this example is pretty good, but the second hand is silver, not white, which is a very common tell.
The first watch I bought was so painfully inaccurate it was laughable - if you get a chance to open the back and it looks anything like this:
Walk away - it should be more like this one:
A proper Omega movement - this is the 565 date movement, but other (500 series) movements were also used.
The dials - some are better than others (see above, quite a good copy of the dial), but some are very obvious:
Excuse the slightly blurry pics, but you can see clearly the two obvious tell-tales on this shot - stubbies (that is, the printing on the hour markers extends outside of the hour markers) and no line around the date window. The better dial (above) is still showing a couple of issues - the Omega logo has happy feet, and the Seamaster script is far less eelgant, but this would probably only be obvious in a side-by-side comparison.
Now the hands - the second hands are a totally different shape, but even the ones which are the right shape are usually silver rather than white. The silver border is much larger on the fake hands (on the right) - more obvious on the hour hand, but still pretty clear on the minute hand. Again, difficult to spot with no comparison, but it's there all the same:
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Hopefully this will be of use to someone, I'm no expert, but these are just a few (painful and expensive) lessons I've learned along the way - take care out there!
Excellent post.
This site is brilliant for anyone contemplating a SM300 purchase:
http://scubawatch.org/hallofshame.html
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