The best 1:1 Rolex Datejust replica watches, a self-winding luxury watch that displays the date through its Cyclops magnifying lens, was launched in 1945 and is one of the Swiss company’s iconic models. It has become an emblem of success, worn by the former US president Dwight Eisenhower. “Any day can leave a lasting mark on our lives and set the stage for new aspirations,” the Datejust blurb runs.

The day that will leave a lasting mark on the life (and door) of Dina Boluarte, president of Peru, was Good Friday, when police broke into her house with a battering ram in search of an apparently unexplained collection of Rolex fake watches for sale and $500,000 of jewellery. The watches are said to include a Datejust with an estimated value of about $14,000, a lot for an official who is paid $4,200 per month.

Boluarte has protested her innocence of illicit enrichment, and this week reshuffled her cabinet in an effort to restore stability. She reportedly also owns a $56,000 Cartier bracelet, but her high quality UK replica Rolex watches drew most attention: she has several, which are so recognisable that a Peruvian news organisation started investigating after she wore them to public events.

One can spot cheap Rolex copy watches from a distance: the Oyster waterproof casing, the sometimes-fluted bezel, the three-piece link bracelet. From Rolex’s “tool watches” for sports and adventure, such as the Submariner and Yacht-Master (handy on a private one) to dress watches such as the Oyster Perpetual and Datejust, it has just the right degree of ubiquity for a mass luxury brand.

The Oyster was invented in 1926, with an emphasis on practicality: “The wonder watch that defies the elements,” Rolex replica watches wholesale called it, choosing as its influencer Mercedes Gleitze, the first British woman to swim the English Channel in 1927. It’s a long way from those chilly waters to the presidential palace in Lima, yet Rolex has managed to cross many such borders.

It has cleverly become identified with all kinds of achievement. These are heights at which you will need one, Rolex intimates. Or if you don’t exactly need one, you definitely deserve it. They are reassuringly expensive, but not all prohibitively so: while a gold and diamond-studded Swiss movements fake Rolex Datejust watches costs about £20,000 in the UK, an entry level Perpetual is £5,000.

If you can buy one, that is. “Rolex has an amazing ability to be everywhere and nowhere at once,” says Benjamin Clymer, founder of Hodinkee, the luxury watch publication. Although it sold 1.24mn luxury Rolex super clone watches last year, according to Morgan Stanley, one cannot simply walk into a store and buy one: a waiting list maintains the sheen of exclusivity.

This is not wholly engineered. The pandemic, along with cheap debt and the expansion of online exchanges, produced a rapid escalation in the prices of second-hand (“pre-owned”) Swiss luxury watches. They have since fallen from the heights, but a brand new Rolex in a box, freshly numbered and certificated, remains largely out of reach.

Rolexes have become a hard currency, both financially and in terms of prestige. There are enough AAA replica Rolex watches to create a liquid secondary market, but sufficient limits on supply to prevent them being devalued. They are resilient enough to be a long-lasting store of value — many at higher prices than when first acquired — yet desirable enough to flaunt publicly.

That has not escaped the attention of the “Rolex ripper” gangs in London and Paris, whose robberies rank highly among worries of Swiss luxury watchmakers, according to a Deloitte survey. Some of the thieves who steal watches for money end up keeping them instead: it is not only deep-sea divers and astronauts who like to display their professional status on their wrists.

Rolex has managed its growth so smoothly that it now holds 30 per cent of Swiss watch retail sales. It has steadily raised its retail prices to get closer to “haute horlogerie” brands such as Patek Philippe, whose watches sell for an average of nearly SFr40,000 ($44,000). A fluted gold bezel Datejust retailed last year in the US for three times its inflation-adjusted price in 1973.

But the world has become wealthier too. Not only can more Americans afford a Rolex, but so can more consumers in countries such as India, where they were once rarities. That has been a financial boon for watchmakers but it also holds risks. If these Swiss made fake Rolex watches become too familiar in too many places, they will lose their old mystique.

Rolex’s Day-Date model was tagged the “presidents’ watch” after it was worn by US presidents including Lyndon Johnson, but the company will not want the Datejust to be identified with Boluarte. That is the drawback of mass luxury: your products eventually end up in many hands. There is no avoiding it in a liquid secondary market, even if stores are tightly controlled.

When Rolex replica watches shop are the best-known pieces in a Peruvian pile of bling, watch out. All the brand’s talk of craftsmanship and heritage has been buried in a political scandal. Boluarte’s new cabinet won a confidence vote on Wednesday but she remains under scrutiny. It may be time for Peru’s president to set the stage for new aspirations.