kanerich

It depends greatly on whether you collect for mechanical reliability, cosmetic accuracy, build quality, or for a specific model or brand, and whether you want accuracy out of the box or are willing to pay for mods. There's no standard that all reps are expected to meet on all these counts. If you're asking specifically "don't I have a right to receive a Sub rep that has an accurate pearl and CG and no visible detail flaws for $200?" the answer is no, you don't. Being a little (or a lot) disappointed by your first replica Submariner is the rep collector's rite of passage.

I bought a bezel insert and a set of spring bars from this seller a few months ago. As they say on ebay, product was as described and delivery was fast. Seemed perfectly fine to me.

Chase-Durer. Watch purgatory.

Get a Hamilton, Oris, Ball, Glycine, Sinn . . . but don't waste that money on an Invicta. Invictas make sense at $150, at luxury watch money you should invest in a luxury watch brand. A $1300 Invicta is like buying a $1300 suit from Wal-Mart. . . it doesn't matter what the quality is like, you've gone way beyond the price point where buying from that particular source makes any sense.

Because bathing is a synonym for swimming. That's why they call those things "bathing suits." "Excuse me, do you speak American?" - Robert MacNeil

Gosh, you think? Were you also disillusioned at discovering that Disneyland is not actually the "happiest place on earth" but a theme park, nothing more? But seriously . . . c'mon, it's VEGAS baby. You go for the gambling, food, strip clubs and the fact that you can stumble around drunk 24 hours a day if you want. The fancy hotels exist to talk the wife/girlfriend into going to Vegas. If a person goes really expecting the Venetian to be like Venice or New York New York like New York or the Luxor to be like Egypt then you deserve to be disappointed. On the other hand it is true that I have met people who have said in all seriousness "why go to New York or Venice when Vegas has it all?" and those people make me cry a little inside.

Now if he would either start letting customers in Japan buy through paypal and get the sweet package deals offered on the Japanese website, I'd be all set.

The way I read this thread, Tourbillon1801 seems to be primarily saying that instead of paying $200 and up for 95%+ reps we should be paying $20 for 75% (maybe) reps like him. As I said before, I don't want obviously fake quartz Pams with dime-thin crowns and misplaced subdials, I don't care if they cost $20. I think most people on the board feel the same way. If he is giddy about getting a sackful of crappy reps for a C-note good for him, but I don't really see why that has to mean anything to anybody else. So I'm not really sure what the point of this topic was, except to prove that Tourbillion1801 doesn't pick up on sarcasm in the English language (not his fault, but kinda funny).

I understand the service is a bit of a gyp, and I'm not trying to be preachy. But you want to be realistic about swimming and adventuring with a 40-year old unserviced watch . . . trusty Rolex or not, it still needs some upkeep, especially to maintain water resistance.

I bought an Omega SMP for my brother's graduation from Jomashop, it's got good prices and has been around for a long time. http://www.jomashop.com/tag-heuer-cjf2115-ba0576.html

That's why I consider my and Zola's explanation to be the best one, because it utilizes no particular logic at all.

I wonder about that, considering he bought it such a short time ago. More likely he received it, saw it was fake and tried to quietly flip it since he got scammed himself, but decided it wasn't worth it when he started getting heat.

Okay, the REAL truth is that the gen manufacturers have a deal in place with the Chinese rep makers to make reps that are good but not perfect. This causes people who would not otherwise consider buying Rolexes and Omegas, and really have no business wasting money on such frivolities, to buy reps and unknowingly start on their path toward WISdom. Over time the reps are insufficient to satisfy their desire to be taken seriously as real WIS's and the rep buyer dips into his son's college fund/scratches plastic/cancels his yearly vacation to Hawaii to buy into the luxury watch club. In this way Rolex/Panerai/Omega gets thousands of new addicts a year and the Chinese rep makers collect all business of all those who can't afford or don't want the real thing anyway, so everybody wins except for the sap who drives a Pizza Hut delivery car, lives with his parents and has a Submariner and thinks he's James Bond. I will no doubt be assassinated by the Rolex police for divulging the truth, so let me say in my last post that I've enjoyed being a member of RWC. Godspeed to all of you.

My datejust is from 1971 and I got it from my father in 1997 . . . it was running fine but after 26 years I just figured it was due a service. While it's a testament to Rolex engineering that your watch hasn't needed a tuneup in 40 years, I'm pretty sure any watchsmith would tell you that you should have taken it in long before now for preventative maintenance and to at the least replace the gaskets and seals.

I can't say generally, but it fit my 005 rep perfectly, out of the box. And yes, that bad boy is a lello crown!

Perfect or imperfect, this is my favorite Panerai rep out of the seven that I own.

The Jimmyzfu crown guard is excellent and well worth the upgrade. It is intended for manual movement reps though -- you should ask Jimmy if it will fit the auto case which I believe is significantly thicker to accommodate the 7750, which is a pretty beefy movement. By the way, manual and auto Pams are not different "generations" -- they are simply different concurrent model lines.

Oh, I forgot to add that I wouldn't sweat the movement issue. While it's true that Rolexes in theory will run for 50 or 100 years, the last time I took in my Datejust to service the movement it cost $400. Follow Rolex's recommended five-year service interval and that's a lot of entire eta movements you can plow through.

I love my reps, but let's not get carried away. Hamilton, Tissot, Zeno and yes, even the much disrespected Seiko will sell you more reliable (on the aggregate), better made, warranteed, actually water-resistant watches for the same price or less than what reps cost. And anyone who seriously thinks that a Chinese Sub is a better piece of machinery than a Seiko Monster doesn't know what he's talking about. Reps are good value compared to their gen equivalents which are terrible value. We buy them because they look and handle like more desirable objects, which is a form of value in itself . . . but they're still just reps. A Seiko or Zeno might not scratch any itch you have but (anecdotal evidence notwithstanding) they will still do more and complain less than reps. I know a lot of members don't like to believe there's anything in the world better than reps -- and on the whole, they are pretty great -- but IMO that's based on a lot of different factors, a whole lot of them emotional. We're rep crazy -- let's not try to take what is basically a religion and try to turn it into a science.

If he's Japanese there are ways to find him that are relatively straightforward but it takes legwork and some background information. I guess it remains unclear to me whether your friend is anything other than simply not bothering to respond. People do tend to lose interest in staying in touch, and it's not like Japan is Colombia or somethng. I know you are aware of this but it's worth mentioning. Good luck finding your friend.

I live in Kyoto -- sadly I am not familiar with Tokyo in general, let alone Setagaya-ku in particular, so I can't be of specific assistance in that regard. But there are general rules of thumb. I guess I'd ask if it's a legit concern that something has happened to him, if so it is possible to for family and friends to contact their embassy and the embassy can work with the Japanese police to track the person down. If he has followed the proper protocol and registered his residence, employment etc. then he should be fairly easy to track down, as Japanese like to keep their eye on foreigners. If he's Japanese and thus the authorities don't really care where he is, or he isn't but has intentionally chosen to disappear, then it's hard to say.

I gotta agree, maybe people should be better informed but that doesn't really justify being a scammer in the first place. Just because there are trusting children in the world doesn't make it OK to be John Mark Carr.

In fairness, I could just as well be a journalist for Fox News by your criterion. I can't help it if people want to package their vacuity in neat little sound bites. I wish everybody would make my job so easy.

Here's what you said, verbatim: "I just bought my first genuine Rolex! I think I am already turning! Thoughts of reps being bad are already flooding my brain! OH NO, NO TURNING BACK, HELP ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!" But then it is my fault for expecting someone who calls himself Faker to own up to what he says.

What's a bigger surprise to me is that someone can think selling replicas as genuine on ebay for $4000 is just clever entrepreneurship, but selling reps for $250 on a website for rep buyers is somehow crazy and shady. If people don't know what I'm talking about check out his defense of a scammer in the auction scams section. How exactly do you reconcile those two positions?