Pugwash

Yes, I agree. I hope my post doesn't lose a dealer any sales, and it's not specifically aimed at Josh and Trusty, even though they are the most lax on their terminology, yet if a dealer keeps deliberately misleading us, their best advertisers, this will have a knock-on effect.

You're missing the point. There's gentle omission of facts on one hand and blatant lying on the other.

They don't deceive us as a rule. We usually know what we're getting, it's not as if they're selling them as gen. If I [censored] down a well, at least my bladder is emptied. And as such, we have some leverage.

Apparently not, unless you tell us they're gens. Using pictures from another site without attribution is always a little confusing. You're going to confuse the noobs.

I don't know any more.

If anything particular had happened, I'd have said it. This came up now when someone else mentioned the "New Asian/ETA 2836" assuming it was an ETA 2836 movement. I mentioned it because nobody else has. I am not afraid of my dealers cutting off my supply, for instance. My primary dealers (Precious Time, Narikaa, Silix and of course TTK) don't lie, but I'm not going to tell everyone to shop with them, am I? [censored]. The point of this board is to help people avoid getting scammed by the real scammers, but we tolerate a little scamming when it's from our friends? The sooner we all tell dealers to stop lying, the sooner it will happen.

When a dealer sells you a "1:1" or "Perfect" watch with a "Synthetic Sapphire" crystal and a "Lemania" or "Asian ETA" movement, what are you actually getting? These are amongst the most common lies told by dealers. It's a war of escalation where one dealer mislabels something and then the others have to follow suite or else have a product that's perceived as inferior. Well, it's time, as a community, to stop the [censored]. We're here to stop people getting scammed, right? Yet we tolerate some lies because we assume people will realise the dealers are just using marketing language. Here's the truth: There is not a single replica available from any of our dealers with a Lemania movement. Asian ETA movements, as sold in the new generation of reps, are not ETA movements at all. There is simply no perfect 1:1 replica of a Rolex Sub. The term Synthetic Sapphire should mean real, lab-grown Sapphire as found in genuine Rolexes, Omegas and the likes, but in some dealers cases, they use it to mean Mineral Glass, as used by bloody Timex. I'd hate to have to ask every time I bought a watch if what they advertised was truthful or mere advertising, so please try to convince your friendly dealers (It's mostly Josh and Trusty, the most prolific sellers here, that use these lies with abandon) to stop bullshitting us. Using words like Ultimate or Best Ever is understandable, it's the usual hyperbole required to show your newer model is better than the last, but perfect and 1:1 mean something absolute. They're getting worse and it's time to stop. I'd love to hear your opinions on how we can deal with it, but we need to do something as just telling the dealers hasn't worked for me..

Not all, but there's still time. I know two of them won't be ready for next weekend though.

My work here is done. I'm looking at sorting myself out with some tools, like a hand remover and decent pin remover once I've moved house.

Yup, throw enough light at this camera and it is the best non-DSLR out there. It's that Leica lens, see.

Randy! You broke my 16610! :( :(

Heh, no. I have 20 or so watches and I don't have a winder.

Nibbler! (ok, so I couldn't find the picture of nibbler with one fang ...)

The point of Photoshop, for me, is to show what I see, not what the camera sees. When you put a watch under lights you get a blanched crystal and a lot of visible dust that you wouldn't normally see. So, I put the photo through the ringer just to get it back to how I actually see the watch.

click for 1280px wide

Where does the vice grip the watch?

Damn. I say damn.

"If we had some ham, we could have ham and eggs ... if we had any eggs." - James Whitham

It's not gorgeous. (to me. If we all had the same taste, life would be boring)

All "levels" palette work. Elliptical selection over the dial, as per, then levels it up, inverse the selection and move the gamma (the middle pointer in levels) left and right until it's good. That's all.

Here's a 2-sec fix. This would be a lot cleaner if you were to work on it before reducing the image: Please excuse my fiddling, but your pics are already very good and I'm just adding a touch more. If your pics were rubbish, I'd not be shoppin' them.

I think you need a polarising filter or a bit more photoshop in the first picture. They're great, though.

It bothered me at first, but I'd rather that than threads called "**** CHECK THIS OUT!!!!!1 LOL ROFL ****"

Thank you for clarifying this fact. However, I was talking about buying replicas from the forum, as that is the entire point of this thread. My apologies for not making that clearer, even though in all my previous posts I mentioned it. Your links clarify that point here: "According to the RCMP's protocol with Justice Canada, our priority for investigating counterfeit products targets commercial manufacturing, importation and distribution. Investigations at the retail level are generally dealt with in the private sector through civil processes." They do point out that it will be a civil and not criminal case at the retail level though, so I willingly concede that point.