panerai153

that's a good question?

You may have shipped and received a thousand packages, but you stick a 10K watch in a box insure it for 20 bucks and take a chance, guaranteed that will be the one and only package to go missing!! I really believe that the idea of getting on a plane and flying over have a nice few days vacation and fly home with your new watch is a good idea. have the seller mail the box and papers, if they get lost, it's a loss, but it's not devastating. Otherwise find some courier service that will allow you to insure for full value. you will have to declare the full value to get insurance, but that's better than taking a chance on a 10K loss if the watch comes up missing.

Never tried straight razors, i'm around scapels all day, so having that super sharp blade that close makes me nervous. I've tried just about eveerything else over the years, and ihave to admit regular razors have come a long way since I started shaving. Back then a Gillette "blue" blade was good for one shave, and that was all. Now the Mach whatevers and their equvelents last for weeks. My one big recent disappointment has been with electric razors. For quite a few years I shaved with a Norelco triple head and it was a pretty darn good razor. Last summer idecided to give electric a nother try. I bought what was at the time the top of the line Norelco, triple floating heads, wet, dry, underwater, in the shower,etc. I have been very disappointed with it, it doesn't shave close at all, If I shave at night, by the next morning I look like I have a 2 day beard.Maybe I made the wrong choice in razors, I was going by previous experience, but this one sure isn't as good as the last one from about 8-10 years ago.

+1 to the need for more HiHo cases, especially some 1680's

cc that is a fantastic build, beautiful watch, and auxair, yours is no slouch either It's very, very nice. My old 7924 Tudor big crown pales in comparison to your watches.

I have to agree wqith denim, unlesx you are going to go the full Monty and use a genuine dial. movement. hands, crown., etc. It's pretty silly to spend that sort of money for a caseset. There are others that while maybe not quite as good as his SHOULD be, with a little work, they may end up better, probably for a third the money. If you'rd going to use a DG movement a MBW dial and Rep hands, crown and bracelet, etc, what's the point?

To the OP please don't take this wrong, but you are brand new here. there are a fair number of guys here who have gotten burned, some pretty badly by people who were supposed to be really talented, reasonably priced watch smiths, who ended up messing the watches up and or losing things or skipping out with unfinished work, etc. So from past experience, there are a plenty of us here who have a healthy skepticism when it comes to things like this, be it new watch smiths, dealers, parts suppliers, whatever. If a few of the guys who live in the area feel adventurous, they will PM you and then go check this guy out. If he does good work, over time, more and more folks will use his services.

Hey hike, any others you want to loan out for a while!! Z that's a mighty fine Tudor, enjoy it. Wore this one today,soon it's heading west to get some much needed work done!

I have bought and sold quite a few box sets over time, some were for genuine watches, some for reps. I think that if your intentions are honorable, nothing wrong with collecting boxes and accessories. if you plan to give your son a watch for birthday, Christmas,graduation, etc. and you are clear to him that the watch is a rep, and it is very, very bad form to try to pass it off (Sell) as genuine, then a box set is a nice touch. I have found however, that having all the boxes, papers and even sales receipts is very much a plus when selling genuine watches, almost no one is interested in a box set, unless you are throwing it in as a bonus, when selling a rep. If you are assembling all the "parts" to sell a replica watch as a genuine, then friend, you are setting yourself up for a heap of trouble. As soon as the buyer shows it to someone who really knows Rolex watches,like taking it to an AD for a look see and they tell him he has bought a high dollar fake, then the manure is going to hit the ventilator!! Paypal dispute, selling fake Rolexes on Ebay, and for your sake hope the guy isn't some gangster type or and ultimate cage fighter who shows up at your front door one day and beats the living snot out of you!! AFA buying one, there are usually tons of them on Ebay. go in and search Rolex boxes and accessories and see what you find.

The 5513 case is the one that MBW used for the old "Polex Design" 1680's. Mine is marked 5513 between the lugs. not sure when they changed to the correct number designation. The 5513 dial is slightly smaller than the 1680 dial, so if you use a gen dial or a good aftermarket like ingod, phong, NDT, etc you will have to cut the dial groove at the base of the rehaut down to accomodate the larger dial, or trim the dial. One problem I see with mine which has a genuine 1680 dial, is the dial fits fine, but since the opening is smaller, the minute markers are partially under the rehaut, which gives them a shortened apperance. It seems like some dials have a pretty generous lip around the edge that allows trimming or the groove surgery, and the entire dial is still visible, not so with my gen 1680 dial. If you are using an MBW dial, you are better, but looking at mine, there is still some cut off of the minute markers with the 1680 dial which was sold with the 5513 case. mymanmatt did the conversion for me and he might chime in and share his experiences if he reads this post. Another thing that has been a recurring problem ,now solved is the DW alignment. A lot of the old MBW 1680's have a problem with the DW being somewhat left justified, which results in the inner numbers from 10 through 31being partially under the dial and not centered in the date window. IF yo use a DW overlay, that will solve that problem. I have one of the old silver MBW datewheels on mine and i wanted to preserve that, so we solved the problem with a gen dial. DW alignment solved, short minute indices created!! So you never ever solve all the problems 100% the cheap way!! The expensive way would be to use a 1575 movement and a gen silver flat top 3,open 6,9 Date wheel, but that adds a bunch to the cost of the build Here is the old dial with the left justification problem Here is my 1680 with the new dial (gen) Here are both dials, you can see the date window on the gen, on the right, is a little more left justified and thus solves the DW alignment problem Frankly if I were starting this project from scratch today, I would probably try to find a better case for my build. I'm not sure how the newer MBW's stack up, if they are true to size cases, the real aftermarket cases like phong, yuki, NDT and Ming Quy are all pretty expensive, which makes this a pretty darn pricy build if you do it right. Otherwise, I would probably live with the little inconsistencies that not one in a thousand people would notice. I was hoping that eventually higho would get his cases to market, but I haven't heard anything from that project in months, so I don't know if it's still alive. One thing that his cases were going to solve besides the correct dial size opening was the crown position, which is not correct on the MBW. ASgain something you really need to know about to see, but another one of those little things that seem to drive all of us WIS crazy!! Hope this helps.

Same old GMT

Great News, especially for all of our EU buddies. Congratulations and best of luck.

I agree, put this to bed. It's not like you are out 600-1k for a dead watch. You were happy at first, then you weren't happy 3 months later. Well pal, let me tell you if I sell something to someone and the buyer comes back 3 months later and says my item isn't any good, found one cheaper, bla,bla,bla, my answer would be, sorry Charlie, you are about 2 and a half months too late. This isn't LL Bean, I don't give a lifetime warranties for reproduction goods. Your complaint period has expired, so get on with your life. I'm terribly sorry that your life got complicated, you had to move, your girlfriend found a new fella, you pet goldfish died, you lost your job, etc,etc, Welcome to the real world my friend, eveyone 's life is in turmoil about 50% of the time, you just have to learn to live with it. Hard for me to belive that early in that 3 months of your lifes upheaval, you didn't have time to sit down at your computer and send Ken a email expressing your feelings about the bag.

Sneed, as usual your builds are fantastic. i believe that your attention to detail, and quality control are second to none. I'm not a big fan of the new blue ceramic (?) sub, really much prefer the older TT 16613's but yours is really,really nice.

GMT IIC

Very nice work, but as ssteel said, unless you make yours in some way unique, I have doubts that you can compete pricewise with the ones that are currently available from Amazon, Ebay and various watch parts houses. If you are able to develop something unique, like exotic woods, or like donetrix engraved placques and other types of decorations, then you might well find a niche market for them.Your plus may be building them with bigger slots so that big watches don't rub on each other. I remember several years ago when Cigars were all the craze, quite a few guys got into building custom humidors. Almost all of them fell by the wayside, because they couldn't compete with hte manufacturers who were geared up with a lot of sophisticated woodworking equipment and could turn out a similar product faster and cheaper. As you and most know, woodworking requires a lot of hand work, but if you have precision jigs and templates, you can cut out the sides, top and bottom of a box X 50 while the guy doing everything by hand works to cut out one. Good Luck with your project

The red dial really doesn't turn me on, I'm really not a big fan of watches with colored dials, outside of White and black, which the color purist say aren't colors, and blue. i have had orange dial and yellow dial Doxas, and the only one remaining is a Orange 300T which was my first Doxa. The colored dials never got much wear, hard to match with clothing. I would have to concur that the red dial would look neat with clothing appropriate to a Summer outing at the local polo club, or country Club and the Cosmograph Yachtmaster would be the "bees knees" with Grey Flannels, Blue Blazer and Club tie at the yacht club after race party.

hard times will make folks do crazy things. People who would under normal conditions never commit a crime get into a financial bind, and the next thing you know they are stealing money. It's always the same story, i have a gambling habit, I was about to lose my house,I lost my job, and I was s desperate.They all say in retrospect that they were planning to pay every cent back, but it never unfolds that way. We got a gambling boat in our town a few years back, within about a year or eighteen months, the embezzlement rate went up about 500 %.Folks gambled away their rent, car payments,etc at the boat, and they figured that they could make it up by stealing, then when they "hit it big", which they never do, they would pay it all back. From what I read, Mulholland claims that his wife who it seems was only married to him briefly, cleaned out his bank accounts, and absconded with a bunch of watches as well. Makes you wonder about a guys judgment, when his fairly new bride leaves with all the loot! After this happened,I went to google earth and found his house in Florida. After seeing where he lived and the house, I would never ever ship him a watch to trade or repair. This is very decidedly a neighborhood on the decline, very tiny houses, not very well kept lawns, landscaping, and one that i would be afraid to leave anything of value inside even if i went to the corner convenience store for a quart of milk.Maybe not the barrio yet, but heading that way fast.

It's hard to say, I have never had a yuki bracelet in my hand, so can only say what I know. First off the Phong is an expansion bracelet, a 6636, which really is a complely different from the 7206 which most of the other dealers sell. It's more expensive, at around 300.00 USD as opposed to 200-300 USD from the other guys. It will accomodate genuine springbars which I don't believe the others will w/o modification. The bracelet is stamped 7206 which is incorrect, I believe for the expansion bracelet.The clasp is stamped 62573HC which, when I googled that number, came up nothing.The 382 endlinks were originally used on Tudors, 7019's and later the 7031-2 Chronographs, so from and accuracy standpoint, the bracelet is all wrong!! When I bought the bracelet, yuki was out of stock, and had emailed me that his bracelet would not accept 2mm spring bars, Natalie (NDT) wouldn't even answer my emails, so I decided on the phong, sort of a last resort. Had I realized at the time that it would take another 6-7 months to finally get my 6542 sorted out, i probably would have not been so quick to pull the trigger! I probably wouldn't buy this bracelet again, unless they got the numbers on the end links, the clasp and the bracelet sorted out. Right now, I'm lookng for jubilee parts to make up a jubilee and that's probably what i will end up using.

Seems like there was some discussion here a while back, but the real discussion was on the Vintage Rolex Forum about a month or two back. A very heated discussion that basically accused onre of the members, who sells lots of watches, of using laser welding to enhance the cases. might want to google laser welding watch cases to see what comes up.

Friday!!!!

Put up a want to buy over on the Vintage Rolex Market

Thanks Freddy and Joey for the info, now to find a folded link Jubilee.

The hand stack didn't change until Rolex introduced the GMTII with the settable hour hand.

It ain't just Europe, I assure you!!!