The OP has the hands issue sussed.
"...hands obtained..."
Many people have mentioned this before, but really beats me how the rep makers get so many simple and obvious things wrong. OK. Forget the complicated stuff like SS cases, bezel teeth and crystals. What about cheap, easy stuff like the hands and bezel inserts????
Crown guards look better than a lot on many SMP Bonds. Pity about the crown. Also the minute hand is too short.... but none of the current reps are flawless.
Yeah, you can get the 2599.80 Chrono as a quartz, but it's not very authentic. Particularly bad is the that quartz has the subdial@6 counting the seconds. Just wrong.
The Aussie dollar has shrunk too...
0.9761 ---16 July
0.6521 ---16 Nov
That's a 33% drop.
If I bought a watch today, I'd be paying one-and-a-half times what I paid four months ago!
Think I'll wait a while...