The 1995 perfect replica IWC Portugieser Minute Repeater was a breakthrough watch in more ways than one. It proved that IWC’s 1993 revival of its icon wasn’t a stunt and that the historic model family was back for good.

The Portugieser Minute Repeater made best fake IWC a surprising power in the elite world of chiming watches. It commenced an upmarket march for the Portugieser that continues to this day. And it created a tantalizingly accessible path to repeater ownership for future generations of collectors.

It’s important to remember how fresh the cheap super clone IWC Portugieser felt in 1995. Prior to the anniversary reference 5441, a limited edition for IWC’s 1993 jubilee, the Portugieser was a rare watch.

Although well known to luxury copy IWC collectors and enthusiasts since it bowed as the reference 325 in 1939, the famously huge dress watch with the pocket watch movement was built in only a few hundred examples through the 1980s.

Having survived the Quartz Crisis and successfully launched both the Da Vinci Perpetual Calendar (1985) and Grande Complication (1990), online replica IWC planned to revive its most famous watch for its upcoming 125th anniversary.

The limited-edition reference 5441 – 1,750 pieces in total – marked the first volume production of the Portugieser in its history. Also known as the anglicised “Portuguese”, the big shop fake watches proved too popular to consign to one-off status.

With a view to building out a full Portugieser model line, planning began for complications. Some, like 1998’s reference 3714 Chronograph, would become best-sellers. Others, like the 1995 Minute Repeater, were destined for prestige duty.

In early 1990s Switzerland, Patek Philippe and Gérald Genta – the brand – dominated the elite chiming watch segment. Only dozens of such Swiss made fake watches issued from those maisons each year.

Even Patek Philippe had only begun to build chiming 1:1 wholesale replica watches in earnest after its 150th anniversary collection launched in 1989. A few small masters such as Philippe Dufour, Christophe Claret, and a young F.P. Journe offered larger brands access to this knowledge on a contract basis. But the idea of building hundreds of minute repeaters was still a zany statement of ambition and nerve.

As it turned out, AAA copy IWC needed help on this front, and it found what it needed in the late 1980s. Somewhere between the scale of the Patek and the piecemeal pace of Dufour, there was the partnership of Dominique Renaud and Giulio Papi. Not yet brought into the Audemars Piguet empire, the two young complications specialists worked with and for everybody from AP to Claret to Ulysse Nardin; IWC sought their counsel.