panerai153

Those are really beautiful. Fabulous collection.

Thank you,Thank you ,Thank you!!!!! It's good to be back.

this is a pretty good idea, and I know your intentions are great, but it is a plan fraught with problems. There are quite a few folks on the forum that I wouldn't hesitate to send just about any of my watches to try. but I wouldn't do it for the rank and file. Another thing, as someone said you have all the problems with customs, duty, seizures, etc. With all the shipping problems going on right now, I hesitate to send one out for repair, much less sending it off to someone to try on.

I agree. this is not the proper place for WTB's, or For sale posts. :thumbdown: The proper place for those are the sales and want to buy forums. As wiesn089 stated, buy a membership, then you are welcome to post in every forum. I think the mods should start deleting these posts.

NO,NO,NO,NO,NO !!!!! I will guarantee you your 1665 will stop and never ever run again if you embarass it with a Jubilee. :Jumpy: Might as well put a diamond bezel and serti dial on the poor soul

If you're looking for a genuine 1665 insert w/ pearl, you aren't going to find one for much less. I paid around 270.00 USD plus shipping for mine, but it was from a fellow forum member, and he sold it a little cheaper. Keep looking, possibly put a "Want to buy" on the forum. Quite a few members here have replaced their inserts with genuine, so there should be some MBW's around if you want to use one of them.Just need to hook up with someone who might have one.

I want to wish all of the RWG family a safe and Happy New Year. It's 9PM New Years Eve, and we are at home, it's storming outside, not a good night to be out and about.

You are right, and these are some pretty nice inserts for the price. The same seller also has some nice inserts for plexi subs (No fat fonts that I could see), as well as a few nice tritium pearls. If you're looking for and insert for your 16610 project, I would jump on these. The sapphire inserts are notably cheaper than the older inserts, but over time, they prices of those will go up as well. Hate to keep flogging a dead mule. but as Dizzy stated, Please, Please never, ever mention the word replica on that forum. most of those guys would refuse to sell to you if they thought the part was going on a rep. And for sure you would be banned from the site. So use common sense and don't say anything about this forum or replicas.

That's what I'm talking about. Dial and hands are a huge percent of the value of a vintage watch. What is so incredible to me is some of these old vintage dials are so worn and beat up, you can hardly see the markings. Writing has been destroyed, most of the lume has flaked off, and they are still asking many thousands of dollars for them.They can't be restored, that would totally wipe out their value. So to me that is where the insanity really peaks. You have a watch with a dial that you can't read, hands that are now skeletons because all the lume has flaked off, and folks ooh and aah over it and write tons of posts, "Beautiful watch, wonderful, magnificent, etc.,etc." What the Hell are they seeing that I can't see? I love vintage Rolexes, but I wouldn't give 10 cents for one I can't wear.Maybe that's why in my opinion, it's better to spend 3k on a super franken DRSD, rather than 15k for a genuine. A watch in the safe has no utility value to me at all. Just my opinion, but if I can''t wear it, I don't want it.

I put a Want to Buy on the Vintage Rolex Marketplace for a set of 585 end links for my 1665 project. best price i could get was 250.00 USD shipped and Paypal included. A lot of very interesting Rolex stuff goes through the marketplace, and like I said before, you know it's authentic (unless it's a Bakelite GMT bezel/insert!!). They have had some really interesting knock down and drag out fights over there, related to the authenticity of some of the Bakelite GMT bezels/inserts. They can't seem to form a consensus on them, but at the prices they are asking, I'm just a curious bystander.

Great photos, great watch!

jojo, Great looking watch. just wondering was the genuine bezel a fairly simple switch? That's my next addition to mine if it's not too major. then possibly the dial and crystal. Thanks

Gentlemen, welcome to the insane price world of Rolex! Vintage parts are crazy, however I will say you can do somewhat better over on the Vintage Rolex Market. Inserts w/o pearls are routinely selling for around 200.00 USD for nice 1665 inserts. And the good thing about that place, you know it's genuine. If you buy a 1665 Fat font with a pearl, expect to pay around 300+, although occasionally you can get one a little cheaper. What we are seeing I'm afraid is strickly supply and demand. Their aren't any more Rolex vintage parts coming from Rolex. So what we have is a static market. all of the knowledgable Rolex folks know this. They know that invariably, as time goes on, the prices will go up as items get scarcer and scarcer. I watch the VRF market every day, and pretty much as soon as something desirable comes up for sale, POOF!! it's gone. As far as an insert for the DSSD, They are insanely expensive from Rolex. I've heard of a couple of folks with genuine DSSD's that broke theirs (It's possible to break the ceramic) Replacement bezels were over 1k from their Rolex AD. Not sure if this was just the insert or a complete assembly, but very expensive. This is in contrast to around 50 bucks for a new aluminum insert for a GMT or 16610 from an AD.

Ronin is right. It's the HOLIDAYS!!! It happens every year, to a lesser or greater degree. millions of additional packages in the system. Just as and example, I read today that on the peak day of sales, Amazon.com a week or two back, was recording 158 sales per second! Do the math, that's 9480 / minute, 568800/hour or a grand total of 13,651,200 for that day. Now I'm sure many of those were multiple items in one shipment, but look at the sheer numbers. Every one of those items gets shipped. And that's just one company. multiply that by companies all over the world that ship packages, and you see the logistics nightmare that Christmas brings. Throw in a couple of blizzards, airport closures, and of course the additional screening that airlines are now required to do before a package can even get on a plane. New US regulations are so strict that no package over 500gms or 1/2 pound can be carried on a passenger airliner. Everything over than weight, and that's a pretty darn small package, must now go air cargo.And everything traveling over the ocean East or West goes by plane What you're finding is a huge backlog of packages just waiting in the air cargo Queue. Add this toxic brew together and what do you have CHAOS!! What we have here is a massive, lumbering giant of a system which is pretty much pieced together, operating in many different countries, most of which have computer systems that don't "talk" to each other, often with archaic and outdated equipment and civil service employees who are at best indifferent. under the best of conditions, it works, but it is not nimble and adaptable, so throw in any of the above problems, and God Forbid all of them at once, and the system slows to a crawl. Eventually, most of the packages will get to where they are going. Some won't, as is inevitable, with the massive volume of packages, all the sorting, scanning, packing in containers,etc. a few will go somewhere they aren't supposed to go. Hopefully, even those will make their way back into the system and appear unexpectedly at your doorstep, months after you had given up any hope!

Unfortunately, Ms Bosker is another in a long line of pseudo journalist, who write these "Fluff" pieces for every newspaper in the land. poorly researched and no basis in reality for the most part. i would imagine that most of the young folks who are using their cell phones for keeping up with the time, will at some point in their life realize that hauling around a cell phone is neither and appropriate or in some cases safe device for telling time. Why did the wristwatch replace the pocket watch? Utility and convenience. Much easier to glance down at your wrist than drag your Elgin out of your vest pocket.It' pretty obvious to me that Ms Bosker did very little real research before she wrote this article. i would bet that she did a few Goggle searches, probably interviewed a few friends at "happy hour" after work,and called it a day. Plenty of research for a national publication!! I'm appalled by the inability to speak and write the native language of this land, which happens to be English. I believe that much of it must be blamed on the shorthand language that todays younger folks use for text messages, tweets, etc.Unfortunately, this bleeds over into normal everyday communications. I can assure you bosses are not impressed with reports and other communication that is filled with grammatical errors, and is practically indecipherable. I have nothing against cell phones, and other portable devices I have and use and Iphone 4, and find it a very useful tool in my work. Some of the medical and pharmaceutical apps are used on a daily basis, and I don't consider myself a Luddite when it comes to progress. I do think that many of the electronic devices we use are something of a crutch, and we become very, very dependent on them. Look around and see who is the most disturbed when the power goes off, and the cells die and the Ipads run down, and the tweets go silent? Not me, I can still find books to read, andIi can still tell what time it is with my trusty obsolete wristwatch.

As much as I like it, I probably wouldn't include the Rolex GMT IIC as a 3 star. The primary reasons are the lack of AR below the cyclops while not very noticable is apparent at certain angles. Bigger flaw however is the incorrect hand stack of the 2836-2 movement. the hands are not in the same stack sequence on the rep. this one is a dead giveway to anyone who has /had or knows about the GMTII's. Unfortunately, this is and uncorrectable flaw that cannot be modded. I would put the Rolex 16610 WM9/BK above the GMT IIC as a 3 star contender.Very minimal modding will get this one into the 99%+ catagory.

That's what makes this forum so great. There are so many knowledgable, helpful, selfless folks who really go out of their way to help. Sometimes all one needs is a little advice and some "how to" but there are times when someone desperately needs a part to complete a project, or a guy with great passion, but limited resources, can really use and appreciate that lonesome part that's been gathering dust in your parts bin for years. Nothing will make you feel better than to "Pay it forward".

Nah!! Just the incredibly slow mail service. Christmas rush, snowstorms, airport closures, increased package security (thanks to the "toner cartridge bombers") etc all over the world are creating havoc with package delivery. Things will get better in a few days as the Christmas rush clears out and hopefully the backlog at airports will ease with better weather. I ordered a Rolex folded link bracelet from Mary on Nov 2nd, it arrived on Dec 21st, over a month and a half from China to the USA. Don't despair they will arrive, eventually.

Don't we have some great mods here on RWG :thumbsupsmileyanim:

If price is not and object, I would wait on a WM9/BK Sub to show up on the sales forum here or on the other rep forums. They are just better all around, no problems with genuine parts, generally work without modifications. You ned to look often and when you see one, you had better pull the trigger without hesitation, because they are really in demand and are gone in a flash.

If the dimensions are the same as the old "Polex" 5513 MBW cases, everything should work. Bezel inserts as well as crystal and others have said above no problems with dials. This is the perfect platform to build either a 9401 or a 9411 Tudor.

great watch :thumbsupsmileyanim: And a very nice camera. I bought one last year and it's definitely my vacation camera now. Takes great photos as you demonstrated.

Ronin, I completely agree with you, as long as the aftermarket parts are identified, or the seller has a disclaimer that parts were replaced with aftermarket. I keep going back to the same subject, and I hate to keep "beating a dead horse", but what most of the younger guys on these forums don't realize is the whole concept of wristwatches has changed over the past 40+ years. Most of these changes have come about because of computers and the internet. Back when I started buying watches, your sources were limited to jewelry stores, pawn shops and ads run in the newspaper. If there were any watch "collectors" back then, they were few and far between. There wasn’t a “watch community”. Per se, although I’m sure in the bigger cities around the globe there were folks interested in watches to the point that they were collecting. People bought watches for their utility, not to collect. I would suspect that most folks owned at the most two watches, one they wore for everyday work, another for dress. If you were fortunate enough to be able to buy a Rolex back then, you bought it because it was a good dependable rugged watch. When it broke, you took it to the nearest watchmaker who worked on Rolex. Unless they were affiliated with an AD, many would offer to replace parts with aftermarket. Yes, even back then, you could buy aftermarket crystals, hands, bracelets and dials could be redone if they were damaged. Using aftermarket parts was far cheaper than sending your watch to Rolex. Also, you could usually have your watch back on your wrist in a matter of days rather than weeks or months if you sent it to Rolex. So aftermarket parts have always been a part of the Rolex story. Looking forward, there may come a day when those same folks who are screaming “FAKE!!!! “ the loudest will be forced to replace parts on their beloved Rolex watches with aftermarket parts, or else put the non working watch in their sock drawer until they can scrounge up a nonexistent or hyper expensive part. I believe that some of these folks are overreacting to the extreme. My definition of a fake is something that has nothing genuine , nothing produced by the branded company, and is primarily produced to deceive others. A genuine is and always will be a genuine, even if it contains some aftermarket parts. Again, I will say my feelings are, if the watch contains aftermarket parts, they should be honestly disclosed.

I cannot believe you destroyed that super rare Kryptonite lumed dial!! :bangin: that is terrible. I'm so glad you left the pearl kryptonited though

Absolutely correct. People get mislead by sellers with 100% feedback. Sure he has 100%, but look at what he's selling. One item out of 50-60 that is over 1k (Diamond engagement ring) All the rest are used clothing, and "doo dads" The 5508 dial really does looks too good to be true. It would be hard to believe that a 50+ year old watch would not have some lume degregation, corrosion and discoloration. Reading some stuff on VRF last week , they were saying that the lume on "Safe queens' that never see the light of day actually ages faster than those out exposed to sunlight. But if it were worn a lot, you would expect other signs of wear and aging. I wouldn't bid on this one, even if I had the money!