A Rolex watch is pretty darn expensive. Now I’m your average guy with an average salary. I’m not the kind of guy who can make it rain in a club. I also think that people who throw that kind of money away are idiots. I wouldn’t spend that kind of money on a watch. I would go down to china town in New York or Jean Talon market here in Montreal (New York is better though) and get a good old fashion twenty dollar knock off. Knock offs have been keeping guys like me looking clean since 1949. Real knockoffs are where its at these days amongst us young go-getters. Here is a buyer’s guide for knock off products. This is the REAL KNOCK OFF Buyers Guide.

Knock off watches

Fake watches are fun just for the fact that they are fake watches. Yeah, you may own a Rolex but I own a genuine Ralex watch made in America’s heartland: Guangdong China. I cannot wear it when it rains or if I am five thousand feet above sea level but it is fun to show off at parties and people love the story of how I bought from a guy wearing a trench coat and offering me the new Nas mixtape.

There is an entire website devoted to replica rolex watches called global replica. This is the place to find that knock off you have been dreaming about, specializing in knocked off Rolexes.

The genuine Submariner watch features Italian 31 Jewel automatic movement and a green hologram sticker on the back. This product retails for about $19,750, you can get this watch for $329 dollars through replica world site.

Is this still too expensive for you? I would not pay over $23.74 - what you would prefer to pay? Then you can go buy a can of gold spray paint and a Timex digital watch for that exact price.

Knock off Guitars

I learned to play guitar on an acoustic. When I had saved up as much as I could spare one summer I bought a Stony electric guitar. What I liked about the Stony was that it looked very similar to a Fender Stratocaster with a shine blue finish. The guitar looked pretty slick as long as you didn’t read the make. Now I am looking for a Les Paul Gibson. I have saved up enough money and want to buy one used since a new one can retail about three grand. There are no problems going with a knock off guitar though. Traditionally it was common practice among punk bands to load up on cheap Mexican made guitars when going on tour because you wouldn’t mind as much when you destroyed them.

The most obvious give aways when buying a knock off guitar are the logos but also check the pickups, the pickguard, fretboard and neck. When it comes to brands like Fender, Gibson, Epiphone, etc, what would be nice is if you had a situation similar to PCs. The clone products being made in the industry were being produced at a scale and quality that was either equal or above that being manufactured by IBM. Unfortunately when you buy a knock off guitar you really need to test it out first. What matters most in a guitar is the sound quality that the guitar is producing. Very often you’re paying a lot of money for a name on your guitar. Fender is great but my Stony sounded really good.

Pharmaceuticals

Generic drugs reduce the overall price of pharmaceuticals. In Canada, the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board regulates the price of non-generic prescription drugs that still have their patent which prevents for knock offs being made. Once a patent is up any drug maker company can then use the formula to produce their own brand of the drug. With an increase in overall supply the demand remains the same and the price declines. The knock-off drugs are just as good as the original but cost far less. On the CBC website there is a study which compared and contrasted the price of specific drugs in Canada with those in the United States and showed the amount of savings. The most striking numbers though is that Zocor (a cholesterol treatment medication) is $177.85 cheaper in Canada but Viagra $4.26 cheaper in the United States. A strong heart versus a rock hard, well you get the idea. I guess it comes down to priorities.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/drugs/

Colognes and Perfumes

Ebay is not something I have ever trusted. I have heard enough horror stories about faulty products and fraudulent claims to write a book. I had a friend in high school who sold pencils on ebay for laughs. He wasn’t a good friend and everyone thought he was crazy but he later went on to become Stephen Harper (or did he?). Anyway, one of the common scams that many is filling discarded old perfume bottles with cheaper brand product and selling it. Most people do not know what a true perfume or cologne would smell like as the original so this is an open market for counterfeiters. The ebay route is still a step up from buying a bottle of addiction by Stephen Klein.

Counterfeit wine

Similar to the problem found among counterfeit perfume is counterfeit wine. Most people would not be able to distinguish a bottle of wine from one year to the next, let alone from one generation to the next. I still buy my wine at the corner store and it never costs more than ten dollars. What has apparently become a major problem in the rare wine industry is people either tracking down vintage wine bottles, filling them with more recent/cheaper wine and selling the bottles to people who have no idea what the wine should actually taste like. Most people have never had a 1967 bottle of chateau Yquem so they would not be able to distinguish it from a 1997 bottle by the same make. You would be missing the oaky, nutty, rich but with a touch of basil. Or would you? I just made all those aspects of the wine up. I do not even know if wine has ever had a basil under flavor. I got you good, do not try to deny it, you would be a liar.

Cheers.