panerai153

I agree with Mike, there is very little monetary support from the masses of folks who visit here. Accolades and hats off to all of the wonderful members who have supported the site through VIP, Platinum and Diamond upgrades, as well as all of those generous folks who donate money and goods to help the cause. However the vast majority of people who sign up for membership here never upgrade to VIP which is a measly 3 bucks per month !! Folks come on the forum, ask questions, pick the experts brains, make a few posts and then buy a watch. Just think guys what the guys here save you on your first purchase, directing you to a TD rather than you sending your money off to some scam site, would pay for several years of VIP membership. Mike and I have discussed this on several occasions, and I sort of likened this to the position most newspapers and magazines were in a few years ago. I'll give you one example. For quite a long time, the NY Times web content was free. However, about a year or two back, realizing that the website was a costly addition to the print edition of the newspaper, they decided to charge for access. Now, you get 10 free articles per month, after that you have to subscribe to the digital edition. Our site is a bargain, only 3.00USD per month, the digital edition of the NY times for phone or tablet is 15.95 USD per month, more if you want to use it on multiple devices. So what I'm trying to say is this site is free for everyone, but there may come a time when every site you visit, including this one, unless it's a storefront, will be compelled to charge for access. It's a simple matter of economics, it cost money to operate a website and unless the members themselves contribute, it's only a matter of time before the site can no longer be maintained. So my plea to everyone is simple. If you are not already a paying member please take the time and upgrade to VIP. VIP membership is less than the price of one cup of Starbucks Grande Latte per month!!

I can't get to work on my IPhone 5 or my IPad which is the latest version. Pretty crazy, because all the other forums I subscribe to on Tapatalk are working fine. Haven't tried uninstalling and reinstalling, will try that tomorrow.

Thanks Mike

From the looks of this one it will most definitely be my next watch purchase.

Still wearing the FC Diver

It opens, but won't refresh. Last showing was 12/9/13. Strange, because all the other forums that I subscribe to are working fine.

Better hope they don't charge you tax, because if they do, it will be based on the price of a genuine AP ROO, and that bill my friend will be way more than the rep cost!!

It's a beautiful watch, and I would suspect it would be a great summer watch. However the baby blue, unless you are a UNC or Carolina panther fan would really limit it's wear. I could see it with a nice white linen suit or a seersucker suit or sport jacket in the summer, polo's and khaki's, but it's sort of like women's shoe rules, Never White before Easter or after Labor Day.

If the address is legible it should be forwarded on to him, or it could possibly end up being sent back to the sender. It is strange, but when it got sorted, it probably got thrown in the wrong container and ended up in Malaysia instead of Australia.

There are tons of really nice genuine watches in the 1000.00 USD to 2000.00USD range, and the range expands tremendously if you add gently used watches, because that will get you into a lot of the Omega and similar priced watch lines (used). Personally I have no problems with letting someone else take that initial purchaser hit! When you can buy a slightly used gen for 60% of the selling price, and the watch is only a couple of months old and comes with all the boxes, papers and probably some warranty left, why not. That initial euphoria from walking out of and AD with a brand new watch lasts for such a short time, and then you start kicking yourself when you see one just like yours advertised on WUS or TZ for hundreds less!

You might want to post this over in the AP forum, probably a better chance of getting a response from the AP experts. Good luck. I have an AP Forged Carbon Diver V3 which I really, really like. It's been on my wrist every day for a couple of weeks now, and that's a looooong time for me!!

As janeto says, it all goes through customs. just like when you arrive back in your country from abroad, you have to go through Passport control first then customs. Every package goes through, some that are suspicious may be opened, some are just run through the X-ray scanner to check the contents against the customs declaration. Some may be seized, but that is generally pretty rare, except in some countries that check packages from China more thoroughly. If you read and do some research, there are tons of threads here about customs experiences by members from lots of different countries.

Check out the watch boxes on Amazon.com, I got a nice one from them a year or so back.

Man, this is a blast from the past. Welcome back guys, glad to have you. look at the join dates so far, Vly, you're the junior guy, only 6 years, 7 months and 28 days!! But hey, you got us all beat on post count!!

You still need to be careful. One thing, is the seller with 1000's of sales a seller of high end watches and parts? What you have to be careful of are the folks who are essentially operating a flea market on Ebay. It's pretty easy to get up into the thousands of transactions when you are selling little nick-nack stuff for 1,2 or 3 dollars a pop. Quite often these folks will come across watch parts and sell them on Ebay. They may not even know if the stuff is genuine or not, but they sell it as genuine, and assume the buyers are knowledgeable enough to tell if its real or not. My scam radar warning goes off big time when I see someone selling a high dollar "genuine" watch on Ebay, and their other 2,967 sales have never been over 10 dollars!! No box, no papers, don't really know anything about the watch, usual claim is it was a "Gift" or bought it from a friend, etc. you can pick up some pretty nice things on Ebay, but you have to know what you are looking for and a really good idea of what a genuine part looks like. If you get active on the forum, you can ask older members advice about stuff like parts, etc. better to post a photo and have folks here tell you that the part is fake rather than buying it and finding out later. Now here's the deal, and I'm going to be brutally honest, you can take the advice of folks here and proceed carefully and really come up with something nice, or you can ignore the advice here, buy a bunch of parts, maybe put together a watch, post it here and immediately about 10 members tell you that every part you bought was fake!! I've been collecting and selling vintage Rolex watches for almost 40 years, I've had a bunch of gens over the years, and a bunch of reps as as well. Even with a lot of experience looking at Rolex watches, I would still not go out and buy any really expensive parts to build say a 6263 Paul Newman Daytona without running photos of the parts by members here. Just doing my due diligence before I hit "buy"

AP FC Diver

I agree, Modding projects can be fairly easy, or they can turn into real nightmares. It's very discouraging, especially if you are new ,to go out and buy a watch, with the intent of modding it only to find out that it will not accept genuine parts, or genuine parts are just not available. Quite a few of the major watchmakers who in the past had pretty loose parts policies have started to tighten up on parts. the worst is Rolex, here in the USA, watchmakers with Rolex parts accounts will not sell parts unless you bring in a watch (genuine) for repair. they replace parts as needed, but the old parts are supposed to go back to Rolex. This is one way that Rolex chokes off the used parts market. I would be very careful about buying parts on Ebay unless you know what you are doing. A lot of the stuff you see on Ebay that's being passed off as genuine is not. If your interest is Breitling, I would go to the Breitling forum and read as much as you can find about modding the models you are interested in. The guys there are the experts, you will get the most accurate information from them.

Very interesting article. Those chronometers are a work of art.

Sorry, another Tapatalk screw-up!!! Posted to the wrong thread.

Probably will last a fairly long time. Cheap watches that try to look like an expensive watch.

AP FC

And by the way Monty, it's Ploprof that's short for Plongeur Professional.

Since I have never seen a genuine, I can't really say anything. Hike, how noticeable is this? Something an AP WIS would pick up at arms length, or is it something that no one could tell unless they had a gen in the other hand, and both in strong light?

No matter what a watch reps, I would never take it for granted that it is water resistant. At the very least have it tested. The biggest problem is most fairly inexpensive testers will only allow you to test to around 5 atmos. Many will only go to 3 atmos. This is adequate for hand washing, splashing around in the shallow end of the pool or maybe snorkeling, if you just paddle around on the surface. It will not be sufficient for scuba to 60-80 feet. Not to say that a watch that passes a 5 atmos test wouldn't pass a 10,15, or 20 atmos test, but if it hasn't been tested, For higher pressures, I wouldn't press my luck. I know that there are others that don't agree with me, but I have a pressure tester, and about half my reps have failed a 3 atmos test, and some of those were dive watches!!

Looks pretty good to me, but as I have stated before, I'm a AP noob !!!