The short answer
Nobody has built a working fake of the Patek Philippe 1735 Grand Complication. Nothing sold under that name is a clone of the real watch. A genuine 1735 is a hand-assembled wristwatch with roughly 920 parts and a stack of functions that only a small number of watchmakers on earth can put together, and Patek made it in numbers you can count on your fingers. So when a listing says "1735 Grande Complication," it is describing a look, not a mechanism.
What the real 1735 is
Patek Philippe introduced the reference 1735 around 1989, tied to the company's 150th anniversary. It is a wristwatch, not a pocket watch, and it carries a minute repeater, a split-seconds chronograph, and a perpetual calendar with moon phase and leap-year indication. Published counts put it near 27 complications, which is why it gets called the most complicated wristwatch of its era. Production is believed to have stayed under a dozen pieces, all built to order for collectors. It has never been a catalog item, and it does not turn up on the open market.
Why there is no true fake
The gap here is not cosmetic. A minute repeater has to chime the hours, quarters, and minutes on demand using racks, snails, and hammers tuned by ear. A split-seconds chronograph needs two stacked chronograph wheels and a clamp that releases cleanly. Faking a dial print takes an afternoon. Faking those mechanisms takes a workshop and years. Factories can turn out a decent tourbillon for a few hundred dollars. Nobody ships a dependable repeater plus split-seconds chronograph plus perpetual calendar at replica money. If a listing promises all of it for a few hundred dollars, at least two of those functions are decorative or missing.
What those listings usually are
- A basic automatic or quartz movement in a gold-plated case with a signed dial.
- A generic skeleton watch where the "tourbillon" is just an open balance wheel.
- A stock photo of a real 1735 attached to a product that looks nothing like it. This happens constantly.
- A no-brand homage, which is a different and legal category of watch.
How to tell what you are looking at
I check three things first. Size and thickness, because the real watch is a slim dress piece and most lookalikes wear thick. Function, because the subdials should do something when you press the pushers. Movement, because a photo of the back tells you more than any description. Then ask for a video with sound of the repeater running, a clip of the chronograph starting and stopping, and a straight answer on whether the calendar is perpetual or a day-date you reset by hand.
The legal reality in the US
Trademark counterfeiting is not a gray area in the United States. Importing or selling goods that carry a counterfeit mark can bring civil liability under the Lanham Act and criminal exposure, and Customs seizes shipments at the border. Owning one for yourself carries less risk than selling, but the object still is not what the listing claims, which is a consumer problem on top of everything else.
Questions worth asking before you spend
- Which complications actually work?
- Who makes the movement, and what is the caliber number?
- Can you send live video instead of catalog images?
- What is the return window, in writing?
If the seller cannot answer the first question in one sentence, you already have your answer.