I can contribute more info to the Hermes band section. I had a little bit of a situation where I bought one bands thinking it was authentic only to discover that it was a admittedly good quality fake leather bands, but still a fake. I got into a whole argument with the eBay seller and ended up just having to return the entire order despite the fact that there were other items in it that I actually did want.
I ended up making some pretty detailed documentation to help with ebay case and to try to argue with seller, but here are my really quick ways of identify good and bad Hermes bands. Images below with super up-close details.
I do wanna point out that since these images were made, I have made a few extra adjustments to things I look out for:
- The locking pin on the lugs not being shiny does not immediately mean it is fake, some authentic bands also have a matte pin for whatever reason. If this is the only thing that you spot and everything else lines up then the band is probably fine
- If the band has had an additional hole pierced at a Hermes store, which is a free service that you can do if you own one of the leather bands, it's possible that it may not be 100% in line with other holes. I've had it pierced a couple of times on different bands and some werent 100% aligned, or 100% as cleanly cut as the factory ones. Textile and Elastomer Hermes bands will never have extra holes.
- Fake bands will often use a B S4 268 DA Stamp even on bands that should not have a B datecode. If you see this specific stamp, don't even waste your time with that band, its always fake
- If you're buying a used Hermes leather band and its not in perfect shape, they can be a little bit stiffer sometimes because the individual who used it didn't do a particularly good job of cleaning/maintaining it. Out of the 20 leather bands that I've owned so far, a couple of them did come a little bit stiff but loosened up after a little bit of gentle cleaning with soft toothbrush and glycerine soap and a tiny amount of water to foam it up, coupled with some gentle massaging afterwards by gently bending around finger/pen in various ways.
- Hermes uses a couple of different leather types and each of them will have a slightly different feeling. Barenia Leather for example is a tad bit stiffer than the usual Swift leather for example.
- If it comes with the orange box and the fancy grey cloth or the newer recycled white paper nonsense cloth thing, its a good idea to make sure that the stickers on the outside actually match what type of band it is. Navy Double Tour for example should say it on the box.
- If the orange box that it comes with has absolutely no labels at all on the underside of it, then it's likely that band came prepackaged with a watch since that orange box would've been inside of a bigger orange box that also contains the actual Apple Watch box.
- Some really old-school unique Hermes bands like the cuff band or the double buckle ones sometimes can come with one of those old-school Apple branded white plastic cases instead of/in addition to the orange box. They used to give those out around 2015/2016 with certain bands. Fakes will never have these because they're far too nice to give out and not a thing on more common/newer bands.
- If a Hermes band was replaced by Hermes itself at some point in the past, the date code stamp can be a little bit different than what the band would have originally had when it was sold brand new. You can have a chat with the seller and just ask them if it was ever replaced and just see if whatever they tell you lined up with whatever the date code year is roughly
- Some Hermes bands have an upside down first letter in the stamp for the first letter. Don't really know why but I've never seen this on fake ones.
- All of the textile bands like the Jumping and Twill and Bridon and such do not have any sort of date code or other identifying stamps like that on the band itself. Basically the only good way to identify them would be to use the quality of the metal hardware like in the images I posted here coupled with box/cloth/seller vibes
- Kilim will actually have a Hidden date code stamp on the underside of one of the little loops that holds the band in place. You can move it out of place with a little bit of effort and it will show you the printed date code
- Deployment Buckle bands, Leather and Elastomer, will also have some markings on the actual deployment buckle itself, as seen with the Kilim image.
Remember, fakes will usually have a whole constellation of things going on with them as opposed to just one hyper specific one from the list above or the images.
