Discuss :-)

[macspite]

Whoops, showing my age there!

It's Cockney Wu Tang Clan - rhyming slang. Sexton = Sexton Blake = fake. Sexton Blake was a kind of Happy Shopper version of Sherlock Holmes and first appeared in print in 1893.

I first came across the term on encountering the artist and restorer Tom Keating who found his own pictures failed to sell - let Wikipaedia take up the story:

Keating perceived the gallery system to be rotten, dominated, he said, by American "avant-garde fashion, with critics and dealers often conniving to line their own pockets at the expense both of naive collectors and impoverished artists". Keating retaliated by creating forgeries to fool the experts, hoping to destabilize the system.

Keating planted 'time-bombs' in his products. He left clues of the paintings' true nature for fellow art restorers or conservators to find. For example, he might write text onto the canvas with lead white before he began the painting, knowing that x-rays would later reveal the text. He deliberately added flaws or anachronisms, or used materials peculiar to the twentieth century. Modern copyists of old masters use similar practices to guard against accusations of fraud.

I would recommend a read of the full article - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Keating - as Tom was an interesting character, an ethical faker who was out to con the so-called experts rather than fool the public. It was from him that I picked up the term Sexton for a fake bit of merchandise.

I bet you are sorry you asked, as a consolation here is a picture of a snide GA-100:

 

[GTR83]

A lot of Asians (among them Indonesians like me) are even able to make a living off manufacturing and selling fakes. It's depressing if you consider both the fakes and a majority of the original ones are made in China. There is a whole Chinese industry dedicated to fakes, not only G-Shocks, and of course the mainland Chinese will do nothing about it - they are getting paid for it, so why not. Note that this comment was not meant in any way to be racist.

 

[rutteger]

I would recommend a read of the full article - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Keating - as Tom was an interesting character, an ethical faker who was out to con the so-called experts rather than fool the public. It was from him that I picked up the term Sexton for a fake bit of merchandise.

I bet you are sorry you asked, as a consolation here is a picture of a snide GA-100:

Interesting read on Tom Keating, certainly more enriching than that GA-100 fake.

A lot of Asians (among them Indonesians like me) are even able to make a living off manufacturing and selling fakes. It's depressing if you consider both the fakes and a majority of the original ones are made in China. There is a whole Chinese industry dedicated to fakes, not only G-Shocks, and of course the mainland Chinese will do nothing about it - they are getting paid for it, so why not. Note that this comment was not meant in any way to be racist.

You are of course correct the issue of fakes is quite a complex one.