jmb

Fakey, you've pretty much nailed my situation with "normal" reps but I'd never broken it down into discreet steps before. I still like budget reps, though, because it's kinda like fishing. You catch a bunch of small ones or get your bait stolen a lot but occasionally you are pleasantly surprised! With the majority of budget reps you get what you pay for but every once in a while you find one that is excellent value for the money if for no other reason than it might be a good modding base. That's what still makes it fun for me.

Cool serial number concept.

I think this will be a "Prince" of a weekend!

Oh, I understand. Something like wife.mil or wife.gov, eh? Gawd I hate that new smiley...

C'mon Drulee, come on over to the "light" side! As far as opening the case you do have a torch and crowbar, right? OK, getting serious face on now... Quite often a ball of sticky duct tape wadded up sticky-side out, mashed against the case back, and turned CCW will get it off. If it is extremely, and unusually, tight then a case-back wrench might be required. 90%+ of the time the ball of tape will do it. Damn, Chi, beat me by THIS much...

The whole 40mm dressy watch thing really doesn't "light my fire", so to speak. I'm glad Mrs. Justasgood will give the l'il orphan a good home...

Chi, that's the impression I got after looking at a bunch of gen pics but then I saw this particular dial on reps at several of our "authorized dealers" so I had a glimmer of hope that there might be year-to-year variations that would account for little discrepancies like this. Other than the lume color it seemed to be a pretty faithful facsimile. K - it may be on it's way shortly...

Red, not sure what kind of swaps would go into a 40mm case. When I ordered it I wasn't sure how I would like the white dial and after receiving is I'm not all that wild about it. I suppose I could always order a black dial and swap it out...

Heh, I know, but I got lazy! From now on, though... I have toyed with the idea of getting one of those nifty PT16XXs. I would, though, like for someone to give an opinion on the dial since I can find this dial in reps on our authorized dealers' sites. Surely they wouldn't sell us something that was completely incorrect, would they?

Flying high with this one...

I had told myself, "No more ready-built reps!", then this one looked interesting and I didn't remember seeing a lot of postings with the white dial. So, in my quest for "things different but not really goofy" I figured what the hell! I don't think the dial is very correct as all of the gen pics I've found have all orange colored lume with black markers and this is orange on 3, 6, and 9 like the GV with white on the rest with silver markers. Looking at some of the "approved" rep sites show reps both ways so who knows! If the dial has a remote chance of being somewhat correct then my only major gripe is it having a 6mm crown instead of the 7mm Twin-Lock unless some versions are supposed to have a 6mm. It seems all of the budget priced Milgauss samples I've gotten, even those advertised as "Same case as Swiss version", have had wrong crowns but at least a 6mm doesn't look as out of place as a fat Sub crown! The sweep on this a21j does not have the stutter that my a21j Milgauss GV has so it's not as painful to watch the sweep hand! I think a minor issue is the sweep hand being a little on the orange side as most pics I've seen seem to make this feature more reddish. The other thing that will annoy some is the rehaut engraving doesn't line up perfectly. I've finally made peace with the fact that the factories will never get this right so I guess I'll have to live with it or do as I have been doing lately and only buying or building older pieces without this "wart". The band is nice and refreshingly made from STEELINOX instead of STEBLHOX and I think actually correct for this model! The etching is poorly executed, though, and rather shallow. All-in-all for a Sub $75 watch it's very wearable but I don't think the white dial is really "me" so it'll probably be found in the "want ads" soon. ;-)

Great shots! I don't have one of these monsters anymore but this kind of tech comparo is interesting.

Now, THAT is interesting! Back to my favorite...

I figure I'll step into "fantasy land" for Tuesday... Nice simple clean looking watch, R, even if it does look a tad strange! ;-) <- my protest against the new winkin' smiley...

Depends on what they look like!

+1 on the smiley...

Well, the parts that help you run fast enough to catch 'em will wear out - I'll vouch for that...

You won't think that once you get too old to chase "new stuff"!

I'd be all over that gorgeous Chrono if I had the desire to be a bachelor, but I'm gettin' too old for that!

Yeah, I know, but I must be strong as I just bought three Prince Oysterdate dials...

AArrgggggh,,, Somebody...Please...Stop...Me...help...

Back to old and simple dial...

Replied... For those that didn't catch the review post of the case here are a few pics of the case and finished watches: Finished Tudor watch (band is extra) Finished Air-King (band is extra) All I did extra on the Air-King was to install a Rolex signed crown and sanded the "Tudor" encraving off the case-back.