Continuing with the misleading terms theme brought my mind to some other things I’ve seen.

I saw a recent advertisement that said its watches were made in a “swiss supervised” factory. This may mean that they actually have one swiss guy at the Chinese factory where the movements are made. I recently had a watch from this same brand that had all of the numbers fall off the face. The numbers on this brand were glued directly to the face instead of the correct way, which is to have two posts on each marker that fit into the dial of the watch.

Another watch brand used to advertise that their watches were made of “Italian resin”, which is of course a euphemism for plastic. A pen company used to market their pens as precious resin; also plastic.

Another major culprit is TV advertising for “collectible” coin proofs. First of all, collectible and valuable are two very different things. Anything can be collectible even airsickness bags. Very often the ad may show the original coin which is valuable, but the one they are selling is a “24 KARAT GOLD... clad proof”, which is to say it’s a gold plated copy. They may also say “layered in PURE 24 KARAT GOLD.” Unfortunately, finding anyone willing to buy items like this years down the road for more money, or at all, is unlikely.