panerai153

Here is mine, MBW case, gen t-39, gen insert, gen pearl, 1575 mvmt, gen hands and DW, unknown maker dial on a Singer blank, gen 93150, gen 585 endlinks. Build and lume by Ziggy. One of my favorites of all my watches. I believe yours could profit from a vintage lume. Price you quoted seems a tad high for the trit pearl, I bought several a couple of years ago, paid 90 USD each, but I know the prices of all vintage Rolex parts are crazy!! How about a 2846 slow beat in place of the 2836?

+1 to that. Before embarking on any of the above builds, you need to do a lot of reading and research. None of these are going to be inexpensive projects, so you need to decide how much you can afford to spend and what you can do with your budget. If you do it right, you will have a beautiful watch that you can wear with pride anywhere.

I did a quick search, and I couldn't find a gold cased 1016, saw a couple of steel versions with gilt dials though. Since this was sold as a sport watch, I kind of doubt that it came in a gold version, but I really don't know for sure.

I know that folks get anxious when emails and PM's aren't answered within nanoseconds of sending, but you can rest assured that Mike will work thru all of them when he returns. Like Mike on a bike said, he is at a funeral, very sad situation, and sounded like when I spoke with him a few days ago, he was going to have to help with arrangements, etc. Mike is a professional, he is a watchmaker full time, and he will get everything sorted out and all the watches on hand finished up when he returns. Mike is very good at what he does, and he is rapidly achieving the status of "go to" guy when it comes to watch modding and repairs. Have patience, and you will be rewarded.

Still wearing this one

Matt's a member here, you can PM him. Matt's done a bunch f watches for me, and I'm very, very happy with his work. Nice thing about Matt, he keeps in contact, and will give me a call and we can discuss problems, etc.He has a lot of contracts for parts and is able to procure things that most of us would have a hard time finding, at a reasonable price.

I'm with you on this ! I've had two and just can't quite pull it off. But for those who have bigger wrists, it's a beautiful watch.

thanks for the link. there are scads of small companies out there producing pretty nice watches at a very competitive price point. Something for everyone out there, you just got to find it!

Agree 100%. high priced hard to find parts are not the stuff to learn on. One mistake, and your new expensive dial is ruined.

Not sure any if those inserts would fit, this watch is considerable bigger than the Rolex GMT's. I believe it's 42mm.i've got a couple of inserts that fit my 6542, I'll look at them tomorrow, but I'm pretty sure they are too small.

Welcome, Beautiful 1675, very nicely depicted. Great photos. This and the 16750 are very, very difficult to rep, as there just aren't any rep cases out there that have that long thin profile, as well as having the closer in crown guards that fit the 5.3mm crown like the gen case. All the rep cases are spaced for a 6mm crown, and that doesn't seem like much, but when you put that tiny 5.3 crown in the 6mm slot, it's a sure tell. If you want a 1675/16750, the only way to go is gen.

Have you ever bought a watch, a genuine I'm referring to, and over time, you start to think "There are just a couple of things wrong with this watch that if re worked, it would be a lot better"? Folks do it all the time, they replace Cyclops crystals on vintage subs with non Cyclops crystals, folks paint the second hand tip red or yellow, etc. So here is mine. I am a pretty big fan of a couple of small "boutique" watch companies, one being MKII, which is owned by Bill Yao in Pennsylvania. MKII produces some really outstanding homages to different Rolex models, as well as some non homage watches. Small production runs, long wait times and very popular. the second one is Ocean7, owned by Mitch Feigh. They are located in Florida, and have produced some very nice watches, probably their most noteworthy has been the LM-7 homage to the Omega Ploprof. again small runs, and nice watches. Most of the MKII's as well as the Ocean7's have been selling new for less than 1000.00 USD, although in the past year or two, some model have gone over that price point. About a year or so back, Ocean7 came out with a GMT with a lumed sapphire bezel insert, an ETA 2893-2 movement, at 42mm it sort of resembled at first glance a Rolex GMTII on steroids. I bought one, and have been pretty satisfied with it, however there were a couple of things that have bugged me from the day the FedEx truck dropped it off. One it has Sword hands, which I have never been particularly fond of, and the other is the crystal. It's slightly domed, but it sits very low and is actually below the rim of the bezel. I liked the lume, although the hands glowed much brighter than the rest of the lume. After wrestling with what to do, I got in touch with Mike (MD2020) and asked him what he could do. He needed to look at the watch before he could make any predictions, so I sent it up to him. After taking it apart, he and I decided that the hand swap to Mercedes hands would be easy. He also recommended painting the entire GMT hand red, rather than just having a red point. Unfortunately, the crystal proved to be a daunting problem. We were never able to find a Sapphire crystal thick enough to significantly alter the crystal placement. We could have substituted a deeper domed acrylic crystal, but that would have required gluing the crystal in place, and Mike couldn't guarantee that it would be water tight with that arrangement. I decided after several months of searching that the crystal change was not going to happen, so we gave up on that. I would still love to find a really thick domed crystal, but they are probably not made in the size that would fit this watch. It would require a crystal of at least 3.5-4.0 mm to give it enough height to be above the bezel insert. I would expect that anything that thick in a sapphire crystal would be pretty pricy as well. So here are the before and after photos of the frankengen LM-5 Before: The lume on the hands glows much brighter than the numbers and insert From this angle you can see how deep the crystal sits below the bezel After:

Very nice Mike, Those are really great watches, and Squale is a well recognized brand in Europe. They have been around for quite a while, and I believe made watches for the French Navy at one time back in the 60's,70's.

My Gen franken Ocean7 GMT-5

As others have said, you didn't do your due diligence, you bought a watch that the buyer "Told you" was a genuine watch, if you had posted photos before you bought rather than afterwards, you would have had the correct information. If you sell this watch as a franken, on one of the rep forums, that is fine, everyone will know that it's not a genuine Rolex, and is priced accordingly, however if you try to pass it off as a genuine watch on Ebay or any other sales site, you are no better than the guy who sold it to you. Also if you sell it and the buyer uses Paypal or a credit card, you can be sure he will file a dispute with you when he finds out it's a fake. you have your answer here, as well as the VRF, There are a few guys there who are big talkers, but may not be as knowledgable as they would like you to believe, but there are some who know vintage Rolex watches inside and out. If you are a dealer in high end watches, you better know your product, or you won't be in business long. Those guys have spoken, what they said is good enough for me.

I agree, post your photos on the Vintage Rolex Forum, the can give you more insight as to what you have. If it's genuine, you have a pretty darn valuable watch there. I don't think I have ever seen a rep of this watch, so unless someone put this one together using all genuine parts, it's real.

It was the preeminent rep forum back around 8-9 years ago, but over time, it lost a lot of members to other newer forums, and finally, it became inactive. It was the first rep forum I joined, probably 10-12 years ago, and it was a great place for quite a while, it just sorted of withered away, less and less folks posting every day, almost nothing in the sales forum and finally, it ceased to exist as and active forum. I'm very surprised that it lasted this long as and inactive forum, as someone had to be paying for the website hosting.

I suppose the folks that were paying for the website hosting got tired of paying for this old " ghost Ship" and let it slip beneath the waves.

Pretty sure no animals were harmed with this one. That still doesn't make it a nice watch. Pretty ugly, and sure to draw the ire of any animal lovers out there! Sure hope you weren't buying this hoping it would be a " chick magnet" , because for sure it's not!!!

I will second that!! The last watch I ordered new was a Lange Datograph, and that was probably 2 years ago, before that a Eurotimez DSSD, and you know that's been awhile!! I buy from members , or buy parts and build my own. Way less stress of buying from and shipping from China.

First you get a second mortgage on your house, then you start looking on all the genuine Rolex sales forums.

Watches come, watches go, life goes on. Remember they are just inanimate objects that can be replaced. When things get better, you will be re energized , and your quest can begin anew. Who knows, you may discover that the ones you had were not what you really wanted after all. After all these years of buying wearing and selling watches, I have seen my ideas of the "perfect" watch change over time. The most coveted watch in 1980 may not even make the top 10 list now!!

The biggest problem you have with this build, sort of the same problem as the 16610 or 1680, you are building a watch that can still be had as a genuine for around 4000.00 USD. I know folks say that ain't so, but if you shop around, and are patient, which most of us are not, you can find pretty nice examples for that price or a tad more. In fact I just saw a nice 1675, head only ,no bracelet on VRM for 3700.00 USD. Herein lies the dilemma , say you want to build a really nice 1675 or 16750, so you decide to use a phong, or Ming Quy or some other high end aftermarket gen spec case. probably north of 1000.00 USD, then a genuine bezel insert, 250-350 and maybe more if its a really nice faded one, genuine dial, good one will be 250-500,gen 116 crystal probably around 100, 5.3mm crown/tube 150--200 depending on condition. genuine bracelet, Jubilee bracelets in reasonable condition are around 500, Oyster bracelets are more expensive, around 600-800 depending on condition. Now you still have to find a movement (2836 with GMT module, or DG 3804 or possibly an ETA 2893-2 ) as well as hands. Plus if you can't do it yourself, you are going to have to pay someone to assemble the watch. What you are looking at is a rep, albeit a really nice one, I would even call this a super franken, but look at the cost. Low end of the price range for everything including movement (2836) 2450.00 High end 3200.00 (2893-2) So now you have a really great little GMT, it is really, really nice, runs great, you can wear it anywhere, because it's got everything genuine except the bezel and hands, and case of course, but it is pretty darn close to perfect. No one is going to call you out on this one I promise you. Especially if you build a 1675, as the hand stack on the gen 1675 is the same as the hand stack on the ETA movements But the real problem is on the high side you are within around 800-1000 dollars of a genuine 1675 or 16750 GMT. If you decide at some point down the line, that a GMT doesn't fit into your plans anymore, the genuine, provided it's in nice shape and hasn't been abused, can be sold for as much or possibly a bit more than you paid for it. The franken on the other hand is going to be a very hard sell on the rep forums. Not many watches sell here for 3k. you might get lucky, and find a buyer with some cash who really wants exactly what you or selling, but usually, the seller ends up breaking the watch up and seling the parts to get a portion of his money back. Don't get me wrong, I think something like this would be and interesting project, and one that would be fairly easy, as there are lots of 1675/16750 parts around, dials, crystals, inserts, etc. I just believe that anyone attempting a project like this needs to go into the project with his eyes wide open.

I really like my 16750, I don't wear it too often, but it's definitely very firmly in the keeper category. One thing that I do like about the GMT's are the utility. nice to know what time it is in Europe when my wife is "across the pond", and I'm stuck back here!! Also it's a nice change up from all those black bezel inserted, black dial watches.