Written by: Leslie Foss

IWC has been making precise-movement, luxury watches for over a hundred years.  Popular models from the swiss company include the Portofino, Portuguese, and Pilot’s watches.  Each timepiece is made with painstaking attention to detail such as smooth movement, high-quality metal and leather, and signed parts.  As with most luxury watches, replicas infiltrate the market and it is useful to know the warning signs of an imitation.

Portuguese IWC Chrono-Automatic Men's Watch

How to spot a fake IWC watch

Here are some tips for identifying genuine versus imiataion IWC watches:

• Misspellings.  Authentic watches say: “IWC Schaffhausen.”  Look for misspellings or grammar errors such as “Made in Swiss” on the case that give away it’s cheapness.
• Look for clean dials and crystals.  IWC watches are made under strict quality-control standards.  Any dust or lint under a crystal is an indication of a fraud.
• The crown’s logo.  If it looks uneven or glued on, beware.
• Luminosity should be good in a real IWC.  A flashlight can be used to test the watch’s “LumiNova” (IWC’s name for their special type of luminosity).
• Movement should be very smooth, and all of the hands including the seconds hand should fit precisely over each tick mark.
• Signed case and parts.  And again, everything should be spelled correctly.
• Price.  Luxury watches can often be found for about 10-15% less than full price, but severe discounts are suspicious.

IWC watches are only sold in boutiques around the world.  You can find a boutique by visiting IWC’s official website at www.iwc.com.  The IWC website is also a resource of up-close pictures of each model, to further help you recognize the high-quality details of genuine IWC watches.

Choosing your IWC watch will be pleasant work.  Each series is made with a sport or tradition in mind.  The Portuguese collection is dedicated to ocean navigation and racing, and is a combination of traditional nautical and modern watch technology.  They feature large round dials with a polished sheen.  The Aquatimer family celebrates diving and IWC’s commitment to ocean sustainability.  These watches are made to be in the water and serve divers’ needs.  Then there is the Pilot series, handcrafted with special functions for flying, navigation, and air travel.  Da Vinci watches, loosely rectangular in shape, are named after the brilliant mind of Leonardo Da Vinci, who invented a type of precise watch movement hundreds of years ahead of his time.  Your personal taste and lifestyle will naturally determine the perfect IWC timepiece for you.