There is no A. Lange & Söhne model called the Lange 2 Tourbillon. The name is a catch-all that buyers use for replicas of the Lange 1 Tourbillon and the Lange 1 Tourbillon Perpetual Calendar, with the occasional Richard Lange Tourbillon Pour le Mérite mixed in. I look for that clue first. A seller who claims a "Lange 2 Tourbillon" is an official Glashütte reference is either misinformed or hoping you are. What you are shopping for is a replica of a hand-wound dress watch, roughly 38.5 mm across, with a one-minute tourbillon showing through the dial, an off-center time display, and the big double date window at the top right.
Prices for these builds land between about $180 and $1,000, and the gap is almost entirely about the movement.
The three tiers you will see
Tier one: decorated automatic, no tourbillon
Rotor removed, bridge stamped to look like a tourbillon, and a fake cage glued under the dial. It does not rotate. At this price the case is usually plated brass and the date font is a giveaway, with thick numerals and the wrong spacing between the two discs. If a listing says tourbillon and the watch costs under $300, ask for a video of the cage moving while the seconds hand runs. That one request filters out most of this tier.
Tier two: real tourbillon, simple finishing
Here you get a genuine one-minute rotating cage, usually a Chinese hand-wound movement with a balance wheel inside the carriage. The tourbillon works. Finishing does not hold up beside the real thing: no hand-engraved balance cock, no black-polished screws, and the anglage on the bridges is machined rather than drawn out by hand. Case thickness often runs 12 mm or more against about 10 mm for the genuine article. On the wrist that extra 2 mm is noticeable under a cuff.
Tier three: the close copies
The better builds fix the proportions first. Case around 38.5 mm, lugs thin and curved, sapphire front and back, and a dial layout that matches the real off-center arrangement instead of drifting to the middle. The date discs sit close, the tourbillon aperture is cut at the right angle near 6 o'clock, and the hands are heat-blued rather than painted. Expect $650 to $1,000 and expect to wait for photos.
What separates a good copy from a bad one
- Date alignment. The two discs should meet with a thin seam, and the numerals should sit on one baseline. Crooked or mismatched heights are the most common flaw.
- Tourbillon height. The cage should sit just below the dial surface, not sunk deep into the case.
- Dial printing. Look at the brand name under a loupe. Fuzzy edges mean pad printing that skipped a pass.
- Case profile. Thick, slab-sided cases with sharp lug edges read as fake from across a table.
- Movement noise. A cheap tourbillon whirs. A well-adjusted one is quiet enough that you hear it only up close.
Pricing and what is fair
The perpetual calendar version complicates things. On the genuine watch it runs closer to 42 mm with a moon phase and calendar subdials. Replicas of that variant are rarer, and most of the ones I see drop the moon phase or freeze it. If a calendar replica is under $500, assume the calendar is decoration. A working perpetual module in a clone movement pushes the build into four figures, and at that point you are paying genuine-watch money for a watch that will be hard to service.
Before you send money
Ask for QC photos on a plain background with the watch set to a specific time and date. Ask for a timegrapher shot if the seller has one: anything past +/-15 seconds a day is worth a conversation. Confirm water resistance claims with skepticism, since a tourbillon case with a display back is not built for water regardless of what the listing says. And keep in mind what you are buying. A. Lange & Söhne makes a few thousand watches a year in Glashütte, and no replica reproduces the hand finishing, the assembled-by-hand balance cock engraving, or the service network. A replica Lange tourbillon is a fun object that tells time. Treat it that way and you will not be disappointed.
One more note on the name
If your real interest is the tourbillon mechanism itself, the Lange 1 Tourbillon and the Pour le Mérite are the references worth reading about. Both use a stop-seconds tourbillon, and the Pour le Mérite adds a chain-and-fusee transmission, which no replica has ever cloned. Knowing the difference makes you a harder buyer to fool.