Waxon Waxoff

Welcome! I second fitmic's suggestion that you do a bunch of reading before you take the plunge. I'm a newcomer to the world of reps myself, and I find the subject fascinating. Having bought a few now, I can honestly say I'm blown away by the quality of the rep watches I've bought.

thanks By-Tor, no surprise that it s a Rolex but I still have no idea why it is called a "Noobmariner" !!

Fred, it's a Submariner rep that's an ideal introduction into the world of reps for newbies. Welcome to the world of reps and the forum from another newbie!

Welcome! I trust that this forum will put the days of being scammed far behind you.

Sony is shuch a pain in the ass to work with on ANYTHING, that i'll be very surprised if there are more than a few blu-ray branded devices two years from now.

I don't have any dog in this fight, but as Murdoch mentioned, Sony has a bunch of partners on board already, so perhaps they're not as hard to work with as they used to be.

If I were betting on which format would win, I'd go with HD, but it's a crapshoot. With the way that the PS3 has come out of the gates, Blu-Ray has gotten off to a head start.

I'm also trying to understand the meaning or differences between the 7750 and/or ETA, so I will be reading up on stuff.

Stormtrooper, the 7750 is a type of chronograph movement. ETA is a Swiss watch conglomerate who make movements. In other words ETA movements are Swiss. There are Asian 7750s as well, and The Zigmeister has given a very positive review of the new version.

Davidsen also has some excellent Panerai reps. It seems like a ton of the serious Panerai fans have used his canon pins to modify their reps from other dealers.

Thanks for the head's up. I saw people mentioning Ofrei all the time on here and had no idea that the man behind the parts was such an idiot.

I vote for the Kairos below. Simple, elegant and based on a 2892 a2. Plus if we could actually get it with a genuine guilloche dial, oh baby! Second choice would have to be one of the IWC watches presented.

That's a beauty! I could go for one of those or the IWCs as well.

No its not difficult, just takes time and care. These guards were so thick, I wasn't sure it would turn out but overall I am very happy with the result... Now I just have to do the other side.

You do great work. Are you planning on servicing and modding other folks' watches at any point?

Reps are great for the price. They provide a lot of pleasure for not so much money. But they're still just reps. Convincing yourself that reps are anywhere near 1:1 equivalents of gens is like convincing yourself that the stripper who's giving a lap dance really likes you. Yeah, you'd like to think that. Yeah, it could be true. But most likely you're just kidding yourself.

Come on. That stripper really did like me!

I agree with everything you said here, even the paragraph I snipped. Reps provide a lot of pleasure for the money, and with the properly serviced ETA movements, I don't see why they shouldn't be able to do so for a long time. And that's more than I can say for a stripper.

what an ugly movement. I would never pay so much just because something is "rare". In the end the item has got to be an example of exquisite beauty which this one clearly is not.

It seems that money might be more abundant and easier to get than water for this particular collector, but I would tend to agree with you.

To quote The Zigmeister verbatim:

"all replica’s have quality and problematic parts that rarely show up on genuine watches."

Anecdotes aside (and my personal experience from owning gens and reps is that reps go wrong at a highly disproportionate, albeit still acceptably low, rate), I'd go with Rob's conclusion on this subject.

Probably true, but the anecdotes are still out there. I was talking with a gentleman whose son had the dial pop out of place on his Rolex, and that formed the impression of the marque. I hold Rolex in much higher regard than he does.

Really good points in the original post. In my mind, reps are close enough where I'm not going to purchase any second-hand gen watches over the internet. If I need someone to point out flaws to me on pictures that take up my entire screen, I'm never going to be able to figure it out in the real world. There seems to be an element of paranoia on these rep boards.

I'm not buying reps to try to pass them off as real. I'm not trying to impress anyone. 90+% of the world at large could give two shits about what my watch is anyway. I'm buying them because of the way they look. I'm never going to buy a real 6263, but I love the look, and with a rep I get to have that look on my wrist.

Oh, and regarding the context issue. I bought my gen Datejust when I was mainly getting around on a bicycle about 15 years ago. So the reality is you never know.

I'm curious to see what the experts have to say. The two reps I've picked up so far feel every bit as substantial as my gen Rolex and Omegas though.

TTK has very strict procedures for contacting him. Did you follow all of them?

I haven't dealt with him, but the primary advantage he seems to offer over other dealers is that he doesn't drop ship his watches. All of them are sent to him and inspected before he sends them off. The same actual watch might be sold by other dealers (who'll make things right if something goes wrong), but they will come to you direct from the factory.

Anyway, good luck from another noob.

I'm glad your first experience was a good one. Like you, I've mostly been lurking, trying to get enough information to make informed decisions. I ended up buying some used reps, and I have to say that I'm pleased as punch with my purchases. Like you, I feel the quality of the reps is so good, even if they aren't 100% accurate to the models they're reproducing, they feel and look every bit as good as my gens.

I just bought my first rep from supermanx. Part of the attraction was that he had done some of the heavy lifting of correcting some of the flaws and oiling the movement, etc. If this watch is anything to go by, everyone should pay careful attention to anything he says. The 007 rep feels nicer than my gen Datejust.

But unfortunatly reading the forums and finding out what the flaw is... is very unhealthy because once i know its there i obsess over it.

Yes, me too. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. A watch is never the same to me after I discover that it's flawed.

I'd also have to agree that I don't like the idea of frozen or otherwise non-working subdials. The quality of the movement is as important to me as anything else in the watch, maybe more important. The idea of the automatic movement is what really set my interest afire.

A month ago, I had no idea that reps as good as the ones I've seen on this page existed. Now that I'm aware of them, it seems to me that I'd have to be intimately familiar with the details of a specific model before I could even consider buying one on eBay. I'd rather buy a rep knowing I'm buying a rep than take a chance with something that might or might not be genuine.

Thanks a lot Edge. Lots of good info in the two posts for a newbie like me.

What the hand position conveys is the least important aspect of these micromachines. They are incredible works of engineering, art, technology and beauty.

Wow, perfectly stated. Like others have stated, on my favorite watches, I can just stare at the dial and watch the sweep of the second hand and be perfectly happy.

I disliked Michael Schumacher to the point of downright hatred at times, but there's no taking away from the fact that he was the perfect all-rounder. He can assess a car and deliver effective feedback in a diplomatic manner.

Sorry to quote just one little bit from all your posts on this thread. I have all the respect in the world for Schu's accomplishments. He's a great driver, and he had an effect on Ferrari that no other driver could have matched. But that respect will always be tempered by my belief that Schumacher, for all his gifts and skills, felt the need to cheat. He also had the misfortune, again in my eyes, of being the dominant driver when technology and the rules lessened the importance of being able to pass cars on the track and increasd the importance of pit stop strategy.

That said, Ferrari are going to miss him a lot more than they seem to believe.

Good guy who tried to enlighten us all about animals we would never have a chance (or want) to encounter in person. He used sensationalism to help broaden his appeal- and it worked.

Perfectly stated.

My wife and I watched him countless nights, and I got the impression that he wasn't promoting himself as much as he was promoting the animals. He had a love and an appreciation for them that he managed to transmit through the small screen more successfully than any animal expert before him. My family will miss him a lot.

Torrents:

I tend to use torrentspy.com for torrents.

Filesharing:

http://www.my-k-lite.com/ - and no, this doesnt have spyware. Uses the kazaa network but not the spyware bundled software. Also, it isnt made by the makers of kazaa.

shareaza.com - or i use shareaza, no spyware too.

There are a lot of good torrents sites, but my favorite torrent program is Bitcomet. If there are multiple files in a torrent, it allows you to pick and choose which ones you want to download.

Greece didn't have such a great time in the final though.

The fact is, the rest of the world has caught up to the U.S. in basketball. The U.S. needs to take the Olympics and Worlds very seriously if they want to win. They don't have the huge advantage of talent and experience that they did with the Dream Team.