Am i glad i found this place!
I always new there would be a decent unbiased, open and independent forum for the higher grade replicas.
I started with an NYC Quartz/Miyota Breitling emergency many years ago, it served me well, about 8 years on the original battery until a knock chipped the crystal, and later that day, a subdial bezel came off and started to float around the dial.
It was a poor rep by the standards i now know, SS plated brass braclet, and the dial was a Chronomat GT.
I did almost get a replacement for it, a twin LCD emergency, but a poor backing on one of the LCD dials, and the LCD was reversed, ie, black numerals on a grey/green background.
My schooldays of taking calculators apart allowed me to almost fix this by using a different polaroid filter to swap to black background and transparent numerals, but reassembling ended up with loose hands, and eventually a bent cannon pin!
No wonder there isn't a watchmaker's course that you can do in a day!
Still, it was nice to see the inner workings, even if it was a quartz movement.
I'm now on the lookout for replacements (it was to be a replacement, but there are far too many "must have" watches)
I suppose my current style is military or special features, i've come to the conclusion that there are no decent Emergency copies about, but the Bell & Ross lines, Hublot's BB, GMT II Pepsi's, and Panerai's rubber or SS bracelet watches catch my eye.
Richard Mille's line is also right up my street, so i guess you can get a feel of what's hot in my world.
I have seen some horrible disasters out there via google, printed skeleton faces, and some B&R tourbillons with a 3 pointed power reserve and trust dial that i assume constantly move instead of a single pointer.
A blind man galloping past on horseback would laugh without even seeing the original.
So the time has come now for research, better to wait and learn than to jump in and make a mistake, so don't be put off if you see me lurking in the background, taking notes!