longshot

i generally do not like gold watches, but... in that exact shade of matte gold the p.o. looks freakin awesome. an ultimate in gold on a black rubber strap with a gold buckle would be (dare i say) damn cool i wonder if you can get ti carbon nitrite(??) coating done in small lots? there is a guy in the napa valley that does re-plating and restoration on gp watches and does incredible work. he did a friends seiko 6138 chrono a couple years ago that was stunning. wonder if he would be offended by working on a rep, hmmmmmmmmmmmmm???

that looks extremely cool with the $120 asian p.o. available that could be a reasonably priced and fun project!

thanks for the link! walt is awesome to deal with and those look great. if they came with white stitching i would alreay have ordered one i'll have to think about the all black...

i have had a pam 001 on the bracelet and my ultimate p.o. just arrived yestarday. i also has the ss breitling seawolf avenger on bracelet. to me the p.o. is lighter and more comfortable than either the breitling or the pam. i still need to do a little bracelet fiddling as it's off center on my 6.75" wrist but don't think the 45mm p.o. looks too big at all

i have one of the 'newest' batches of noobmariners on the way from neil, i hope i emailed him today to ask if it was the asian 21j or the new asian eta 28XX that river has. if i hear anything i'll post it...

dang! now i kind of wish i had waited 5 days. i could have had the p.o.and the pam 120 i'm interested in i can only hope that as the eta reps dry up and are replaced by asian auto reps the value stays higher

i had the same problem i had an orange 3rd gen, sold it. an orange 4th gen, sold it. a black/orange 4th gen sold it and got ripped off with counterfeit $$ so after much thought i ordered a black/white ultimate from joshua last week!

almost all of our dealers are having serious paypal problems and internet/email problems because of the undersea earthquake that cut the fibre optics cable. business may take longer than normal for a while

dang... i ordered my ultimate last weekand it's in the mail but the only asian 21J watch i have owned did have problems so i'm still happy! i talked to joshua about the rubber strap and he is considering ordering the strap for his genuine planet ocean and there is a chance he will use it to make a rep 22mm rubber strap

i reported it, but ebay is soooooooooooo beginning to [censored] me off the other day they canceled an auction of mine with two days left and 15 watchers. i had bought a pair of diesel trainers in sf and after wearing them twice for maybe a total of 4 hours i decided i didn't like the fit. the color combo as listed by diesel on the box was coach and brazil nut. i had a pic of the box in my auction. ebay canceled my auction for 'key word spamming' for using the word 'coach'? i disputed it and they still can canceled my auction? but they will let rip off artists sell $300 watches for $3000 to get the final value fees...

but there are also some amazing reps coming out at great prices neil's noobmariner, the black SMP neil had, joshua's $120 pam 120, the $99 black SMP GMT that belial had etc... as long as you don't want complications it seems the asian (seagull?) auto works fine and i suppose if you loved the watch and it eventually died any of those could justify dropping in an ETA or miyota later on

neil i have a big pile of this money with saddam's picture on it. it's really colorful! would that work? luckily i no longer have a missus to check my finances

would it be possible (worst case) to just send your favorite dealer an international money order? i've sent letters and documents in a usps global priority envelope to a lot of addresses in asia and generally they are there within 2-4 days. a but more hassle, but money orders are cheap and so is global priority

a couple years ago on the seiko forum one of the members took a monster (200m wr) and froze it into a solid block of ice overnight. then took it out and put it in a pan of water and melted the ice and brought it to a full boil it was running fine when he fished it out of the boiling water

well it is genuinely butt ugly and also seems to have a lot of wear for a brand new watch? of course anyone dumb enough to spend that much money on such an ugly watch probably would not notice the wear!

bazz thanks for the comparo pics, first time i've seen that shot my black ultimate is on the way from joshua and i was worried about the size. but i wear my ingy a lot and wear 44mm pams and it does not look that much bigger!

i've had a pretty good experience here locally my guess is that most independent watchmakers need the business. with so may quartz and disposable watches and dept stores and mall kiosks changing batteries etc there is (sadly) sadly not much work for them. the guy who does my eta rep work here in sacramento is always happy to see me and amazed at the overall quality of the reps. of course an 'old school' watchmaker who specializes in rolex etc and does not really need the business would probably look at it differently my guy has a whole counter of repaired watches for sale that people have not paid to pick up, probably a good indicator that they would be willing to work on reps!

we are soooooooooooo lucky the dealers do not have pugs pics if i hadn't bought an ultimate p.o. yesterday i would have been emailing joshua for one of these just from those pictures! great job mate

ben good choice! i ordered my (i think) 14th watch from joshua today and have been happy with every transaction. even when there has been a problem he is great at responding and will take care of you enjoy your new watch

joshua's 40mm pam 48-49-50-51 use the newest asian 7750 and are really very, very good reps. with no chrono functions to complicate things they also seem to be accurate and reliable

1. 2. you were not kicked off by anyone. all caps is considered yelling on every forum i've ever been on and is considered rude. 3. almost all of us have had gens for years. 4. so your first love is taking really unimaginative pictures of other people's not particularly rare or notable automobiles? didn't know there was a forum for that? 5. grammar and sentence construction and correct word usage counts (due vs do?).

i cannot imagine the need for such a thing for two reasons: 1. synthetic sapphire has a hardness rating of 9 on the mohs scale of hardness. no more, no less. see here: http://www.amfed.org/t_mohs.htm 2. the way you check 'hardness' on things like stones or metals (metal commonly uses the rockwell scale) is by applying pressure to a point (using something harder than the material being tested) until it dimples or deforms. then measuring the force needed. sapphire is very hard and very scratch resistant, but brittle. that's why omega used acrylic crystals for the moon watches and seiko refused to use sapphire for professional idve watches for decades. they shatter when they fail. so assuming you used a diamond tipped tool (diamond is 10 on the mohs scale and 4 times as hard as sapphire), you could apply pressure until the sapphire shattered. not much sense in that

synthetic sapphire is synthetic sapphire. aluminum oxide. period. the mohs hardness is the same honestly this question has been answered a 100 times before. i suppose it's possible that rolex or others get theirs from a source with slightly better quality control,. but until one fractures from the pressure of a 300 meter dive it's impossible to tell. a 30 second google search or wikipedia will tell you more about the synthetic sapphire used in watch crystals than you would ever want or need to know

i don't even like dressy/sporty watches and i love my ingy if you wait for another version you may just end up waiting till they're gone (closed factory SMP, breitling avenger seawolf ti and ss, etc). i've told this story before but i very accidentally wore my ingy into an ad. last time i was there they did not sell iwc. this time i walked in wearing the ingy to discover that they now do. they are excited about the new brand and both salesmen came over to look at mine and go 'ooh aah' as they did not have a full size in stock. no ar? too short hands? date font? show me someone who can call an incorrect date font on someone else's wrist, moving, and i'll believe it the ingy we have is the ultimate i don't now of a single watch (besides rolex?) where the rep factories have changed a date font to make it more accurate? if a rep will pass to over 99.99% of the public the factories seem to think that's acceptable...

the loudest 'winders' i've ever had were my gen SMP and doxa sharkhunter. much louder than my vintage seiko 6309's and 6105's even