Tim

Sharkskin bands, of which I have a couple, are naturally waterproof but exposure to water will change the grain somewhat. The one's I have had were almost a suede type surface when brandnew. After exposure to sweat, water, and what not, the suede type texture flattened out and now it almost appears like a finished leather. And the colors when new can be a little wild but they will get more subdued once the grain flattens out. The only leather I've not seen affected very much by wear has been stingray. /Tim

http://www.thewatchprince.com/watch-box /Tim

Nah nah nah, I have in storage a pair of original X-Men Ruby Juliets with the special edition case all BNIB. I'll sell them to you for $600! /Tim

I assume you mean rep Oaks. Or are you saying that I have to throw my Juliets away? /Tim

Seems we have a couple of people that like being "direct" in their posts. We don't have much room to criticize humorless Paneresti. Humorless counterfeiters!!! Reading RWG is such an emotional experience. First part is like a worldwide soap opera "Days of Our Reps". Then I feel bad because we made fun of someone making minimum wage and someone says they'd be grateful for minimum wage. Then you get to learn about everyone's obsessive compulsive disorders. What a ride!! I will say that checking tracking is fun in one respect, though I don't do it often. It is fun watching your package travel around the world. It is kind of like a vacation trip by proxy. I think it would be really neat if sometime one of our dealers would take some pictures of where the watches are made. Then some dealers should post a picture of their sales office. Course there could be an element in this of it possibly being best just not knowing. I suddenly have visions of an 8 year old slaving away with a loupe in his eye. Maybe we need a dealer named Kathy Lee. /Tim

Has anyone else seen something like this? I have two gens and one rep that do this now all with ETA 28XX movements. When you manually wind the watch, sometimes the rotor engages and it becomes momentarily difficult to wind. While winding, the rotor will actually start to turn and you can make it do actual revolutions just by winding the stem. What causes this and is it tearing the guts out of my gear train when it happens? In a similar vein of movements being difficult, I also have one rep with an ETA 28XX movement that will not start running after being wound from a dead stop. If I very lightly tap the edge of the case on the table, it will then start and run fine. What up with that one? /Tim

Who needs Parliment when you have a House of Lords! Long live the peerage!! ...you crazy Brits! /Tim --->joking

Hey! My pimples are clearing! It's not nice to make fun of people. /Tim p.s. And what do you have against Star Trek???? Luddite!

You don't know how insurance works do you?

I have the Swiss Unitas, or so I am told. Got it from Joshua so I suppose it is as advertised. What did Vacuum do for you? Pinion and lume? Does anyone have a better crown for the 177H? /Tim

I'd certainly pay that much more, if not even more than 50%. So I buy a DJ that is kind of really well done. You look at it with a triplet though and it's a mess. Crap floating down inside the dial, dial printing crooked, movement starts and stops. The watch is $188 and has some problems. I'd have paid $300-360 without question if I could be guaranteed a watch that was QC'd and the problems taken care of before shipment. /Tim

You have helped! The watch I have now is the 177H, I keep wanting to type 117 for some reason. It is nice, like I said, and the movement looks good except for the font being just a tad too tall on the engraving. I'd just as soon keep this one (although I do like the total bridge engraving like on the G models) but like I said, it needs a couple of mods. The crown and pinion really bug me, and the lume, well the lume you don't see unless its dark so it is not in my face. Who does your mods and do you know if there is a better crown available for the 177H? Thanks for the info. /Tim

I need some advice on a Panerai. I like the design but I am not madly in love with it. I'd like to have one really nice example. I bought a 117H from Joshua but have come to understand that the pinion, lume, and crown are wrong on it. So I am trying to figure out what to do; either mod this 117H or get a better example. I asked Davidson which models he has that are closest to being 1:1 and he suggested either the PRE V 201A with the new dial or the base Ti 055 with the white dial. They both look nice to me and the 201A looks like it might be a winner. Can one of the Panerai experts suggest which is the best way to go? Any of the options will seem to cost me around $300. I can either mod the 117H with a new pinion, lume, and crown, or buy the 201A or 055. Davidson of course suggests that I should buy both the 201A and the 055! Go figure, but he did offer me a nice deal. I'd have less of a decision if Davidson was a little more communicative about how he mods the watches. They look like they already have the pinion problem taken care of and the lume looks very nice. Does anyone have an opinion on these models? And, what exactly does Davidson do -- is he only reselling what some really good factory is putting out or is he doing the mods himself? /Tim

Dutch-French-German, hummmm first chocolate, then the world! Bell Labs is in there somewhere. But according to the U.S. Courts none of them did anything useful; and so it is because America says it's so!

Uhhhuhuhuhuh. You're good Pug, very good! Had me referring to some history to make sure I had it right. Then why is it that when Apple accused Microsoft of violating its copyright by appropriating the use of the "look and feel" of the Macintosh GUI, Xerox also sued Apple on the same grounds? The lawsuit was dismissed because Xerox had waited too long to file suit and the statute of limitations had expired, not because Apple had properly paid for and executed a licensing agreement. It is said, according to popular lore, that Apple gave some PARC engineers who visited Apple to look at their GUI some "gratuity" stock for their personal engineering assistance but not to compensate Xerox for it's intellectual property. And you are sorta right about the Saehan. That was the name of the company that developed the MPMan and sold it in Asia. Eiger brought it to the US with the same name in a distribution deal. So I'll start calling it the Saehan MPMan when you start calling your Opal a Chevy. As to how much an improvement the iPod wheel was over the original design, that is a subjective opinion. My opinion is that it is an improvment in the original concept but it is not the wheel that makes the concept work as a marketable product. Otherwise I'd have a touchy wheel on my car, my watch, my stove, etc. /Tim

Well children, Hitler :hitler:, and Bush . /Tim

Way to avoid stumbling over your principles! Bravo! /Tim

Nit-picker. First, I said MP3 PLAYER, the operative word being player. Second, didn't you just read about the 1.5 Billion with a B dollar judgement entered against Microsoft in favor of Alcatel over the MP3 format? Read the story, you can find it on Google. In essence, Microsoft paid licensing fees to a company that apparently didn't have the right to transfer the license. NOT an open and transparent technology the same as most other technology, contrary to what you assert. Why do you think Apple perverted the ORIGINAL idea and generated the ACC format (which it then promptly patented) which is a bastardization of the MP4 standard? /Tim

To me, what you are ripping off is a marketing operation. In very few cases are the original inventors of something the one's who profit the most from the product. It is more a question of who can package the product the best and who gets to market the quickest with the mostest. Panerai. Panerai ripped off an original design from the Officine Panerai, a company which disappeared after WWII. Who originated the idea? Who's design was it and how did it get to where it is today? Apple computer. The original mp3 player was something called the Eiger Labs MPMan. If you look at the desgin, the iPOD was a blatent rip off of the concept. Apple is a notorious offender. Apple back in the early 90's was pressing a case against Microsoft for supposedly stealing its GUI. Did Apple come up with the idea of a graphical user interface? No, Xerox PARC labs developed the concept that Apple ripped off. Yet Apple sits there and says it came up with the idea and owns the "look-n-feel" of the thing. Yet even more, did Xerox PARC develop the GUI? Nope, some guy named Ivan Sutherland who was going to school at MIT at the time. It was his college PhD thesis. The Apple II? A rip off of an IBM (believe it or not) concept and design (IBM 5100); but was that the first incarnation of a Personal Computer? Nope, that goes back to 1950 to a thing from Berkeley Enterprises called a Simon thought up by a guy named Edmund Berkeley. Remember Ivan up above? He wrote the first substancial program for the Simon in High School. What happened to Sutherland and Berkeley? They both died comfortably. Not nearly filthy rich considering the pile of money made by their inventions. So who owns what and who is ripping who off? The concept and design of a wristwatch has been around for how long now? More than what, 400 years? So what is the bits that are being illegally copied today? A name, that's what. A trademark. That trademark represents a corporate marketing effort and that is who we are cheating. A bunch of marketing nit-wits who ought to spend their time doing something more productive in society anyhow. Except it is even worse today since most of the watch brands are now owned by corporate conglomerates. What is a value add for someone like Rolex? Superior technology? Advancement of design? Look and feel of a wristwatch? Nothing? The design can and is freely copied. Invicta, Seiko, how many others with a dive watch similar to the Sub. Is the Rolex any better? If anything this is a commentary on the warped values of our society. Look at me sounding like a Socialist! So yeah, when what you are selling amounts to a barrel of snake oil, you get awfully protective of your reputation -- in other words the cache of your particular brand of snake oil. But you know what? It is still snake oil. /Tim

Noooooo! Don't do it don't do it! /Tim

Self serving self serving! And leading by example. Two fouls! I get a free kick. /Tim

You know, I am not getting all the discussion of the crown guards. I pulled out my perfect LV from Adnrew and it is pretty damn close. What am I missing? Where are the usual flaws on the reps? /Tim

How so? Sinn has a pretty dedicated following. /Tim

I want! I want!! We all should get together and demand a Sinn 757 or we will collectively neve buy another rep, we promise cross our hearts. /Tim

Well obviously the RWI cup runneth over. /TIm