freddy333

John Winston Ono Lennon Assassinated by a fat, insignificant religious lunatic, 30 years ago today

Ouch. I think epoxy would be best as it will never let go. Of course, if you bang the pearl against something & it smashes, you may have to literally grind the remaining bits out.

Ditto that.

There are numerous posts regarding the inherent design problems (& remedy) relating to seconds @ 6 7750-powered watches (this being 1 of them) that you can locate via the search. Aside from that, the salient issue with 116509 is its incorrect (too large) index markers at 3, 6 & 9. The inner flange around the dial is also too deep as is the caseback, but these are relatively minor inaccuracies compared to the index markers (which I corrected on my silver dialed version)

If not gen, it certainly looks the part (better than most of the aftermarket bezels I have come across).

As predicted in these forums, there are new 'vintage' Rolex parts (bracelets, bezels, big crowns, etc) coming out of Asia that will/are fooling many otherwise knowledgeable dealers/collectors.

In general, your point is well-taken. But, above the $10k range, & especially at $60k+, I think this is anything but 'just a freaking watch'. At this level, accuracy & authenticity are all that matter. While, subsequently, it appears that the seller may be exactly what he professed to be (an honest guy with a limited memory & photographic skills), his original auction, including less-than-revealing pics, sparked more questions than it answered. And the selling point of VRF, in my book, is their unerring & unequivocal pursuit of perfection. If a watch passes through their ranks unscathed, you can be pretty sure it is the real deal. Anything less & the odds (of your getting less than you bargained for) go up. Of course, some there occasionally bark out-of-turn. But, when large sums of cash are at stake, I would prefer to get my ego bashed-up at bit than to have my wallet emptied.

Another great pic.

Without knowing his tastes, I can only recommend that you avoid giving a rep unless you know for certain that he is into them.

Back to my beater to start the work week

Overfed, oversized & over-the-top. Only in California.

Old news, but a great resource. Stefano is 1 of the co-authors of Rolex Daytona: A Legend is Born & a regular contributor to online Rolex forums (not RWG of course).

Alot of truth in the 1st part of that statement. Not too sure about the 2nd part.

6542 - T115 1675 - T116 The difference lies in the location of the cyclops owing to the 1mm larger case on the 1675 (40mm vs 39mm) & differing movements (10xx for the earlier '42 & 15xx for the later '75).

Very interested in reading that. Stunning pic. Still wearing Mystery today (Sunday)

Marty - if cost is an issue, I would steer away from IBM. And unless you need a gaming or high-end video/Photoshop machine, you can easily get by with a 3-4 year old, entry level laptop for $200-$300. My current laptop is a nearly 10 year old Dell Inspiron 8100 (1.2GHz Pentium III, .5 gig of RAM, DVD R/W (which I upgraded to a DualLayer DVD burner) & running XP Pro sp3), which you can often find for about $100 or so on ebay. They are good, reliable machines.

The search is only as good as the searcher controlling it (to make your searching more effective, I would recommend everyone read this). On the other hand, because of the relatively large number of forums (each with its own set of pinned articles) & somewhat obtuse online board help system, RWG can be a very daunting place for a newbie (I often have trouble locating the RWG Rules withing the maze of links around here). New members, who are interested only in, for example, Rolex watches, may never even find the wealth of pinned how-tos, tutorials & reviews in the General or Watchmaking forum areas. That said, some new members' posts seem as though they tried very hard NOT to find something before posting. I think what I am trying to say is that we might need to make it easier for newbies to find (& learn) the basic rules of RWG & for everyone else to cut them a little slack when they honestly misstep.

If I ever replace the MBW mid-case in my (gen-powered) double-red, I would probably go with Yuki's case. It seems the best combination of accuracy & value.

Nice, Flex. Never saw that before? Is it a rep? What is the story on this? Mystery found its way back onto my wrist Saturday night

I've had a number of PC laptops & agree that you should stay away from HP. In my experience, IBM & Dell have been very reliable, but keep in mind that Windows is nearly always the bottleneck on PCs. Make sure the laptop has at least 1 gig of RAM (2 is worth the additional cost if the laptop supports it). Whichever laptop you get, I would strongly recommend wiping the drive clean & installing a fresh copy of Windows XP Pro or 7 (avoid Vista). Then, get online & download all Windows & hardware updates for your laptop (including a check of firmware updates from the laptop vendor's website). Install a good virus scanner (today, I recommend Norton 360, tomorrow, who knows) & whatever apps you require. So configured, you should have a reliable computer.

Still Friday here & still wearing my white '42

Good point, but I think a more accurate comparison would installing a VW Beetle engine into a Caterham 7 body (repro of Lotus Super 7), since Phong's case is not gen. I cannot rationalize the cost of Phong's cases since they are not gen & I can usually get either a used gen or DW/Yuki aftermarket case for 1/3 to 1/4 Phong's price. Although the latter cases are not 1:1 matches with Phong's case, neither is Phong's a 1:1 match with the gen. And just to fine-tune the point, my double-red (all gen except for the mid-case that came from my old $400 MBW & aftermarket modded dial, which, with reluming cost me about $400) & white '42 (all gen except for dial & insert, both of which cost me about $450) have been inspected, closely, by 2 knowledgeable, old-timer Rolex watchmakers & neither found any aftermarket parts in either watch.