Short answer
A. Lange and Söhne is a German maker in Glashütte, Saxony, not Switzerland. The company builds fewer than 6,000 watches a year at one site. Every case is solid gold or platinum. Fakes come from workshops in China and sell online for $150 to $3,000. No replica uses a Lange movement. Lange sells movements to no other company. A fake with a working outsize date, a hand-engraved balance cock and an untreated German silver plate does not exist at any price.
What a real Lange has
- Case metal: 18k gold or platinum. Lange has not put a steel case on a serial production watch.
- Balance cock: hand-engraved with a floral pattern. One engraver cuts it. Every pattern differs.
- Three-quarter plate: untreated German silver, a nickel and copper alloy. It has a pale yellow tone. Replicas use rhodium-plated brass.
- Screws: blued steel with polished flat heads.
- Outsize date on the Lange 1: two apertures, each with its own number wheel. A visible gap sits between them.
- Caseback: sapphire crystal on both sides since the 1994 relaunch.
- Serial numbers: stamped on the movement and the case. The numbers match the papers.
Marks of a fake
- Steel case, or a case described as gold-plated.
- Printed or laser-etched pattern on the balance cock. Hand engraving leaves burrs and uneven cuts.
- One date window with two printed digits.
- Mineral glass, or sapphire with a purple or blue tint.
- Loud rotor. A solid gold rotor runs quiet on a ball bearing.
- Misspelled text. "Made in Germany" set in the wrong font, or the Glashütte spelling altered.
Price gap
A Saxonia Thin in white gold lists near $25,000. A Lange 1 sits near $45,000. A Datograph runs near $90,000. The gold in a solid 18k case weighs 40 grams or more. At 2025 metal prices that gold alone tops $2,000. A $300 counterfeit cannot hold that metal. This is the first test to apply.
Legal position in the United States
Trafficking in counterfeit goods is a federal crime under 18 U.S.C. section 2320. A first offense carries up to 10 years in prison and a $2,000,000 fine for an individual. Customs and Border Protection seizes counterfeit shipments at the border. Import of a counterfeit item is barred under 19 U.S.C. section 1526. A seized watch is destroyed. The buyer gets no refund. Personal possession is not a federal charge in most cases. Resale is.
Supply and demand
Lange produces small numbers. Boutique waits for popular references run 6 to 24 months. Secondary prices for a Datograph or an Odysseus sit above list. That gap creates demand for lookalikes. A buyer who wants the look at 1 percent of the price buys a fake. A buyer who wants the movement cannot. Lange finishes parts that a copy workshop never makes, including the chatons, the ratchet wheel and the engraved balance cock.