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Still around, but life is completely nuts. I'm up to juggling four companies, and soon to be a fifth. Fortunately, I'm single. No wife, no kids, no dog, so it makes it easier to manage. Entertaining offers on my largest company and expecting I will let it go sometime later this year. Will give me enough money to retire, or more properly just let me work when I feel like it. State of my collection is stagnant. I don't have much time to partake in the hobby much anymore. still lurking around here, but not posting much. Haven't built anything new for a long time. Thinking about downsizing the reps, and maybe buying a nice gen. Hate that my projects spend most of their time in the watch box ... Have to admit, I miss Ubi and The Zigmeister. Loved the insight and detail in their posts. Ubi's projects started me down the path of doing builds, and I'm lucky to have something in my collection that The Zigmeister worked on.

When I was young and stupid(er) I was on a business trip to Puerto Rico and ran across a guy selling Submariners with (gasp) AUTOMATIC MOVEMENTS. I had to have one. I wore it proudly, constantly mesmerized by the dark blue of its dial and bezel insert. It was breathtaking. So walking home from work one day I passed by Ben Bridge jewelers in downtown Seattle, the Rolex Authorized Dealer. I went in and admired their watches, tut-tuting under my breath that they were all black. All missing that distinctive and handsome deep blue tint. To my eye they were otherwise identical. The sales girl sauntered over and I allowed my lovely blue Submariner to peek out from my sleeve. She immediately spotted it, and sizing me up as a man to be reckoned with, asked if she could hold it? I gingerly handed it over and she looked it over, then asked if I was happy with it? I said yes, but admitted it does gain a bit during 24 hours. Like 5 minutes. So she took it back to their watchmaker in the back room and wasn't gone very long before she came back, holding it at arm's length like the rotting corpse of a dead fish. She handed it back and said "you know, that's not a real Rolex". Truer words were never spoken! I drew myself up to my full stature and said "of course not! the money I saved on my purchase paid for the trip where I bought it". Sheesh. It's amazing I survived my youth and stupidity.

And once you find The One that you simply cannot live without (it changes week to week) don't make the mistake of buying something else that's "almost as good". Because you'll do that 2 or 3 times and eventually get The One anyway, and will have wasted a bunch of money getting there. Ask me how I know.

@chriz74 I’m not mocking or belittling you, we all started out sometime and even our most legendary experts knew nothing once. If you can’t currently easily spot which dials or other parts are better than what you currently have, then read and learn, enjoy your watch and rock the shit out of it, knowing that pretty much nobody else can tell either. As long as you don’t go looking for trouble flashing it off and claiming it is genuine it is unlikely to get much if any comment. Enjoy the beginning of a long and enjoyable hobby while it is cheap. Buying upgrade parts without an eye to match, just leads one on a wild orgy of wasted money, ask me how I know When you can no longer look at a part of your watch without seeing faults you can not live with, then you will know what you need to upgrade with and that answer is always different. Some are more fussy than others, some can spend more and sometimes you just don’t need a particular watch to be the $6000 franken to get pleasure from it. The only wrong answers to those questions are those you take from someone else without knowing why

When you're starting out in this hobby everything looks great and no matter what you buy, you wear it proudly. Over time you become more familiar with how the genuine watches look, and become familiar with their details. Then you notice your watch doesn't quite have those details right, and you get the itch. Then you're off on the pursuit of incrementally improving your watch. It's great fun, and there's really very few permanent answers, because the parts people are always improving too. So "who's best?" changes. But in rough terms there are categories of Junk, Mediocre, High End and Nosebleed. Prices go up exponentially as you move left to right, and parts become distinguishable from genuine only under a good quality loupe. For example a 2183 is a fine workhorse movement, but an ETA is better. An ETA is a fine workhorse movement but genuine is better. But which one are you willing to soak in the ocean when your seals fail? It's all in the details.

...............and this is all they found.

My cheap Submariner looks fantastic in the dark. Even the lume is none existent just like a forty year old genuine one. Best $15 I ever spent I love it so much I put a genuine Swiss movement in it and a genuine Japanese battery 🤪 like i said, sometimes you need to spend a lot of money to get what you want and sometimes something cheap is fun. The really funny thing is friends and family can’t tell the $15 the DHGate at $120, the JF at $400 or the genuine one apart

Q..."How good is a Yuki (dial) if compared to the Cartel one really?" A..."The cartel dial isn’t terrible, but the lume pretty much is, fakes are never identical, it is simply an impossibility from a production point of view, never mind cost constraints." I agree. Lower tier cartel watch lume is probably the lowest grade lumey toon stuff they can get...about one step up from glow in the dark lipstick. Yuki dials are almost always better than cartel dials in my experience. I have a few assorted Yuki dials from 6 or 8 years ago up to 3 or 4 years ago and most of them are pretty good. One exception is a pair of '5512' dials with ratty printing...the letters look like ''''''''''''" under magnification, not a solid line, and the letters appear dimmer than usual because of the segmented lines. Also have a Yuki '5512' dial with very good letters but the lume has a green tint to it that looks a bit too green for me. Otoh I have another Yuki '5512' serif dial that is as good as any aftmkt dial I have owned. I had a woody for 5512s a while back. Have a higher $$ 1655 dial (can not remember where it came from) that is not much better than the average cartel '1655' dial and have a Phong '1655' dial that is very, very good. The higher $$ dials can be hit or miss imho and the best aftmkt dials that I have came from 'IG44' but that seller is long gone. Basically, with dials it's the luck of the draw and how critical you are. "The good ones are so close that only a very few can tell and usually under close inspection and magnification, but there always will be differences." True. I have one genuine Lemrich 'Mk I' 1680 dial and if you compare it to a very good aftmkt dial you can see a difference but mostly due to it being 40+ years old, the lettering etc on a very good high $$ aftmkt dial is very close. "Can the ETA one be installed on the 2183?" If you mean a common Miyotaclone 2813...not without cutting the dial feet off. "When you're starting out in this hobby everything looks great and no matter what you buy, you wear it proudly." Thanks to RWG (and Nanuq) I am becoming a seasoned repliker collectiker. Now I wear my quartz submareener after dark instead of in broad daylight.

The cartel dial isn’t terrible, but the lume pretty much is fakes are never identical, it is simply an impossibility from a production point of view, never mind cost constraints. The good ones are so close that only a very few can tell and usually under close inspection and magnification, but there always will be differences Also remember that even if you fit a genuine dial to a Cartel, those that can tell the dials apart can tell the case, hands, crown, bezel, insert, date wheel and crystal apart just as easily As the old tuning shop slogan said, “Speed is just a matter of money, now how fast do you want to go?”

Come to think of it, this one didn't either. What a heap.

The specification sucks, it doesn’t even have cup holders

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It's been a long absence, but nice to see old friends! Miss you guys! Have not done much with watches in a long time, and frankly, with some of these new pieces coming out, there's really not a lot to do with regards to building either. Admittedly, it's kinda strange to have a new rep that doesn't need a gen dial, or hands or crystal... And more shockingly, has a reliable clone movement with 72hr power reserve... So, been spending a lot of my free time putting miles on the car. Miles of smiles 🙃