panerai153

I chat with him very infrequently on facebook. i believe that he has so many other inrterests, watches have taken a backseat. Wish he were here though, he had some great watches!!

My 2000 "P" serial 16610 has a Superluminova Dial/hands from birth. As someone said, the first 16610's came with Tritium dials, but by 2000 they were all Superluminova. In your second post, you were asking about bracelets.I'm not sure if the change to SEL bracelets (93250) came at the same time as the dial change from Tritium, or they occured at a different time. Early 16610's had Trit dials and regular endlinks/93150 bracelets. Of course if a very early 16610 went back to a RSC, they could very well have replaced the dial with a lumi service dial/hands, just as they could have replaced a bracelet with one with SEL's if the original one was worn out or damaged. From my perspective, you'e OK either way dial or bracelet wise, just have to have the right story!!

genuine 93150's are pretty expensive, but there are some pretty good rep models out there.Also you can pick up a 93150 clasp and endlinks and you will have a really nice bracelet. I love the older 16610's with drilled lugholes. i ended up buying a "P" serial from 2000 a few years ago.by 2000 they were using SEL bracelets (93250), Although you could build one to whatever model year you wanted. I really don't wear it too much. but it's not going anywhere, I'll pass it down to my son at some point. Here's mine for comparison

I agree # 2 looks the best AFA the Comex lettering and color. What are you going to use case wise?

Most definitely have the back engraved. Find a really good professional engraver. As to the value, who cares, this will be a family treasure. Even if she throws your sorry butt out at some time in the future (just kidding LOL !!) If your Children's names are engraved on the back along with the birthdates, she will NEVER give it up. Don't give it to her while she is in labor!!! Trust me,I have done probably 10,000+ labor epidurals. A woman in the thros of labor is not a reasonable, loving,caring person, she is going to hate you at this point, because you are the person responsible for all this pain.All she wants is her momma, until the epidural kicks in!! So at least wait til then, or better wait until after she has the baby, everything will be wonderful then. You can engrave everything but the birth date, take it back to the engraver later and have the date added.

Same as yesterday

Finally Friday!! Started off with this. Now it's off to do some yard work.So the 1665 gets a rest, homage to the 1665's older brother steps in to take it's place for the rough stuff!! Sort of like a stunt double in the movies.

Congratulations!!!

Seems like that ("perfect condition, running great, bla,bla bla") is an ongoing problem over on the VRF. the mods have posted several warnings that "overstated" sales posts will be subject to removal and the seller censured, obviously hasn't happened!! That's a great looking project. it will be a really lovely 6538

Need I say more!!!

At one time jmb did some case back engraving . Not sure if he is taking in any work now.

I will defer to you guys. For sure If he turned down an offer that close to the asking price, pretty sure it's real

Nice rep. Crown too big. Looks like a 6mm, should be 5.3.

Your photo isn't coming up!

He also posted that on the Vintage Rolex Forum, i believe there are more and bigger photos over there. That is one very, very impressive group of watches. it amazes me to see the number of guys out there who have these astounding collections of Rolex vintage watches. I don't know what they do for a living, but you have to have some seriously deep pockets to play in that game!!

W. i think you are right. Another problem, you can only sell the genuine parts on VRF, the phong case, the caseback and the movement (if it is a phong modified movement) are all parts that you can only sell here and the other rep forums. That's the Big,Big problem with building one of these wonderful "almost genuine" super frankens. When you decide to sell, you need to be prepared to take a real hit. A genuine Rolex if taken care of, especially one in nice condition is going to at least hold it's value, and probably appreciate over time. Reps on the other hand will almost always depreciate. i have seen this for almost 10 years, from my days on TRC and now RWG, i spent a lot of money modding (not anything like you spent on your Daytona) but when it came time to sell, folks acted like I was nuts to list a MBW 1665 SD for 900.00 USD! I had guys actually post "Man, this is a 400.00 USD watch, how can you ask 900.00 USD for it"? Well because there are probably 600.00 USD worth of genuine parts, plus the cost of getting it modded, so it's really a bargain. Maybe to me it is, but not to others.

That's a pretty good idea that sounds like a good idea. I looked over the hand selection at Borel and Ofrei and the longest they offer (minute hand) is 12.5mm. Where would I find a set of the wide hands like those on the GMTIIC that will fit a 2893-2 movement? I believe that someone posted that the GMT hand is the same size as the genuine Rolex GMT hand? Are the other ones just regular ETA hands like the 2836, etc? Now for part 2, the crystal. It's very hard to tell from these photos, but the crystal is flat, and it is actually recessed below the bezel insert. I havenever seen another watch like this, I have seen a couple that the crystal is flush with the bezel, but never one below the bezel. I believe that a thick sapphire domed crystal would look great on this project.. Any thoughts on this part of the project? Here is a photo that shows the crystal/bezel relationship. From the distortion, it may seem that the crystal is slightly domed, it is not, it's dead flat.

You are right, I need it to be spring time!! lots morer things to do outside and not so much time to cook up projects and ways to spend money!! Actually, that was sort of the look that I was trying to achieve. I had a Pepsi Steinhart GMT years ago, mine was the smaller size one though. I sold it for something else, can't even remember what it was. AFA changing the bezel insert to a black, probably not. The bezel insert on this one is sapphire with the lume on the bottom of the insert. also i have a bunch of black bezel watches already. Here is what it looks like in the dark.

I have an Ocean7 LM-5 GMT which is a similar watch to the Rolex GMT's in that it has a Pepsi bezel (Sapphire). The biggest problem that I have with this watch is the sword hands. I have never been a fan of these, and iparticularly don't like the way these are only lumed about 3/4 up and the tip is a solid polished silver color. the movement is a Swiss 2893-2, so it'sa a nice movement. What I'm thinking about doing if possible is replace the hands with Mercedes hands ala Rolex. Now here is the problem the watch is larger than a Rolex GMT, the inner diameter of the bezel is 30.75mm. I laid a set of Rolex hands on top of the crystal, just to get and idea, they look OK, but the standard hands are too short. I believe the standard minute hand is around 12mm. To really look right I would need a minute hand of probably 14-15mm anda correspondengly longer seconds and hour hand. the GMT hand is Ok. So my question is, what do you all think about this as a project, and the most important question, are larger Mercedes style hands available. I know that there are some watch manufacturers that have larger GMT's that use Mercedes hands , Steinhart has a 42mm version that comes to mind. Suggestions? Here is the watch in question

Go to the WUS forum, then go to the sales forum, type in Seiko monster see what's there. then go to Ebay, type in Seiko Monster and there will be about a thousand results!! i have owned a couple, great watches. Lume like a torch. And not particularly expensive. Also water resistant to the stated depth. Great choice for an everyday work watch or beater.

I only brought this up to get and idea as to what it 's costing. I would have guessed that it would be pretty close to the price of a good used 16610. And don't get me wrong, I appreciate the challenge of gathering parts and coming up with something better. I only have one rep that hasn't undergone extensive mods, and that's a UN Black Surf that I rarely wear.Everything else is modded., several of them are really "Superfrankens" I do know from experience selling modded watches, you seldom ever get even close to what you have invested. There have been some beautiful super modded watches on the sales forum here, over the years,and a fair number of them either sold at a deep discount, or were parted out to recoup as much of the cost as possible. the big problem is we love the ones we got, until we fall in love with the one we ain't got. That's why most of the guys on this and every watch forum are serial "flippers". Because of this terrible disease, we generally have to sell one to buy one, unless you are lucky enough to have deep,deep pockets, then you can just store away the old ones and get new ones. If it were me, and I'm only speaking for myself, because I have zero modding skills, I would have saved a few more pennies and bought a genuine. Maybe because my role in modding is a minor one, I am a parts gatherer and a check writer, not the guy who is actually putting the watch together, my take on this is different. Even though I fall in love with watches, i fall out of love with some of them just as fast, so I sort of look at the end game when the watch needs to be sold. How much is it going to bring, and how much money am I going to lose in the proscess.

Wait til summer!!!

I applaud your efforts, but I'm going to play the devil's advocate here. In truth, I have never seen a vintage Rolex 1680 in the wild that looks like that. I haven't seen a dial like that unless it was in a watch that was water damaged. Also the bezel doesn't look like a normally worn bezel would look. this one looks like one that nanug would do with his 6# sledge and his anvil!! There are hundreds of photos of vintage 1680's around and about, both rep and genuine. I've owned several genuine and several reps so these are one of my favorite Rolex watches. I had oner that I wore every day for probably 6 years working around farm equipment, cattle, horses, manure, grease, oil, dirt. You name it. that watch had been immersed in it! The only thing that was damaged was the acrylic crystal was so scratches up, you could barely tell time, and the bezel had a few dings, and scrapes.Mine had damage from the outside in, yours looks like it's damaged from the inside out.

Very Nice!!

Did you keep up with the prices of all the parts? It would be nice to see what one could expect to shell out for a project like this? Just wondering how close all your parts were to the price of a genuine 16610? it is a a beautiful job, and I'm sure will be a source of pride for you.