Short answer
No factory makes a working replica of the A. Lange & Söhne Tourbograph Perpetual "Pour le Mérite". Every watch sold under that name uses a generic movement. The calendar windows sit on a printed dial or on a simple date wheel. The tourbillon opening is a hole over a balance wheel. Prices run from $40 to $400. The real watch is a 50-piece platinum edition. It carries a tourbillon, a fusée-and-chain drive, a split-seconds chronograph and a perpetual calendar. Reported retail at launch: above $500,000.
What the real watch is
Lange presented the Tourbograph Perpetual "Pour le Mérite" in 2018. The name joins two words: tourbillon and chronograph.
- Calibre L133.1. Hand-wound. More than 1,000 parts.
- Tourbillon with fusée-and-chain transmission.
- Split-seconds chronograph with a 30-minute counter.
- Perpetual calendar with day, date, month, leap year and moon phase.
- Platinum case, 42 mm. Limited to 50 pieces.
The first Tourbograph "Pour le Mérite" arrived in 2005. It had no calendar. Lange made 101 pieces in platinum.
What the fakes are
A counterfeit listing shows a photo of the real watch and ships another item. Common builds:
- Quartz or low-grade automatic movement.
- Printed month and leap-year windows. They do not move.
- Open balance aperture with a bridge cut to look like a tourbillon cage.
- Case at 40 mm or 44 mm, not 42 mm.
- Generic caseback text. No serial number in the 1/50 to 50/50 range.
The split-seconds pusher on the real watch works. On a copy it does nothing.
Checks before money changes hands
- Ask for a photo of the movement through the caseback. The L133.1 has a hand-engraved balance cock, gold chatons and blued screws.
- Look for a chain. The fusée-and-chain drive is visible on the real watch. Copies show gears.
- Advance the date past February. A perpetual calendar jumps from Feb 28 to Mar 1 in a non-leap year. A fake date wheel reaches Feb 29, 30 and 31.
- Count the pushers. The real watch needs pushers for chronograph start, stop, reset and rattrapante.
- Weigh the case. Platinum is dense. A steel or brass case with plating feels light in the hand.
- Read the dial text. Many copies print "Perpeal" or "Perpetual Calender".
The spelling in the keyword
"Perpeal" is a misspelling of "perpetual". Pages that keep the misspelling are keyword lists, not watch listings. The same applies to "tourbogragh" and "tourbograph perpetual".
Prices and unknowns
Fake listings sit between $40 and $400. Some sellers ask $1,200 and claim a Swiss movement. No evidence supports a Swiss movement in that price band. There is no public record of a functional clone of this reference. The number of counterfeit listings in circulation is not known.