Devedander

I believe lense crafters was somewhere from $60-$80...

Which begs the question, with so many watches out there and our reps being as good as they are, do they have some watch specialist sitting there verifying watches or something?

I think I have read some stuff about the clasp on Seamaster/Planet oceans but usually that they are too tight... either way I woud check the repair forum and if you find nothing, ask there... better chance proabably to get a solution... My SM has the opposite problem in that the clasp is too hard to close...

Wow! Creative solution! Looks good too, especially considering how much it cost to do it Wonder how much to have a jewler engrave it properly...

I think this version should be very different from Ruby's if what Josh and Trusty say is true that they special ordered it... Sucks about your other one... can you glue the pearl back on or make one? Maybe you can get Ruby to send you a new bracelet or something?

Hey it's SF!! Want a perfect watch? Buy a gen. Want to not have someones ass under your stall? Don't use public bathrooms in SF (that's a golden rule anyway!) But I am glad you don't know what a glory hole is... it would be funnier if you did but something you can easily go through life without ever knowing about

Good to know, sorry I didn't see the details on other posts about the lengths you go through to stay anonymous... I just assumed like all the other "legally quesstionable" sites I belong to this simply operated behind a "plausable deniability" screen, but then I guess having paying dealers negates that possibility... But as for pictures, I am not saying get rid of pictures, I am saying enforce 100% offsite hosting or very small pictures... in a page of 25 posts I would guess the average bandwidth for avatar use rivals or surpasses the actual content... Instance, page 4 of this thread I download with no pictures, total file size 164KB... I count file size of the avatars (not many big or animated) and seems it's about 200+ KB for avatars... force those offsite hosting and your bandwidth cost goes down. We all have photobucket accounts I think... Small avatar... a few KB is still much larger than the average post text that accompanies it... if you can remove that bandwidth expense it seems like it could make a large difference when pages are accessed many times... But in general, agressively reducing costs is something you can have full control over and which will provide repeating returns, getting more people to pay money is going to be harder to accomplish in the longrun and harder to maintain... That said with this knowledge of your expenses it will change what I think of becomming a supporter... in the meantime I actively try to click the banner once a day and will continue to do so.

I wonder... we know AR coating labs can coat the crystals... Josh already offers $120 service and water proof... could he offer AR upgrade too? Seems like it should be possible...

Yes it was, not very gracious of you... you may know a lot about watches, but would it kill you to learn how to use a glory hole properly?

Opera - seems to work fine... And her bag looks heavy... maybe pay her more... or give her a free watch or something... hopefully she can eat the leather band...

Do you have original parts? I do quite a bit of PSing and I could try to rebuild it for you if you like. Maybe as a last resort built the whole thing and size, then add effect layer? Also try flatten and rasterize before resizing sometimes has been a workaround for me... I like the page, very classy and professional looking... kind of quiet though... not that it's bad, just used to more "hot sale web store" look like Paul. Feed that girl on your front page... she looks like she may die soon... or already did... Funny thing, whenever I read Sashwatch in my head it comes out Sasquach...

Or he was testing us Then again... maybe some lucky guy will order and get the gen in a box instead of rep Other than date font and wheel seems to be recessed on rep I can't really spot the other differences you guys see (besides AR, but really shows how much diff AR can make)... that's one hot lookin watch! Wonder if I can squeeze in a 5th job somehow....

I thought you only had like 3 watches anyway? And with your move to SF, you will still get plenty of glances from men... but they may not just be envious any more

I know I am not a supporter yet but I hope it's still ok to toss in my idea... At some other forums I have been a member at or even modded they did not have the luxury of member support... costs were footed by adds, sponsors and admin pocket book, so obviously they were very $$$ minded as a neccessity... One thing I saw often was avatars must be hosted offsite or at least aggressively size limited (64x64 1000bytes or something) and no animated avatars... With only a cheap $100 a year account you can get a TB a month which can cover rediculous amounts of text... but throw in a few pictures on a constantly refreshed page and you will blow up bandwidth in no time... Hope that idea helps... And for those who are care (not diredcted at Admin, owner is always free to ask what he wants of members, but rather other members), my supporter status will come when it does, guilting me into it won't make me hurry it and I don't believe in buying credibility so don't suggest that to me. Thanks.

As much as I could carry in my wallet and not feel too bad about if I lost it.

Dealers know the games better than anyone... I would always give credance to a dealers advice. Bear in mind in most cases it is protection for the dealers at your cost as if customs seizes most dealers reship at no cost to you. Check with your dealer on this policy though as it is up to the dealer how he handles it. And of course the other way to look at it is, with two packages you have twice the chance of getting one searched... But if the dealer recommends two packages and its on 5 more, I say usually stick with the dealers recommendation until such time as you have reason to thinl better from experience.

I totally understand what you mean about fear of not being able to sell, in fact one of my offers was about 10% under asking price... I don't have a ton of money so sometimes I am a few short on asking price of watch, so I will ask if the seller will accept extra. I try to be rasonable (I don't offer $50 on a new @6 daytona, but I might offer pretty low if I feel there is a legitimate reason the watch will be in low demand, ie gen 3 PO when there are new gens out) but I always feels it's totally fair of the seller to say no for any reason at all. If you feel scared your watch won't sell and accept, my view is, that's tough... you accepted... unless aliens had a probe in your brain and were controlling you, you made a choice and it's up to you to live with the results. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. What if I offer you full price for fear you will sell it before I get a chance to buy it, then later you say "hey most of my watches aren't sellin, 30% price drop accross the board" would it be right for me to say "hey I want 30% back from what I paid you"? No... I say it doesn't matter why you agree to buy or sell, it's your choice to make and it's done... I would hate to see the floods of email if our dealers got hit up for refund requests if someone bought a watch a few days before the price dropped... heck I might buy a PAM for fear they will stop making it, but gives me no more right to ask for money back if the price drops because the factory spits out 100k more that floods the market. If Paul has a crazy sale to clear out some Guccis that he thinks won't sell, then a week later some big star is seen wearing that Gucci and it becomes super popular, would it be right of Paul to stop shipment on all those Guccis and email the buyers saying "sorry, I had a clearance for fear I would be stuck with stock, but when it turns out the risk went away I reversed my gamble and now want you to pay more." And action out of fear (or any action) is a gamble, you decide if you want to take that gamble or not, but it feels quite litterally like dirty poker to renig on a gamble after the fact. The thing that really urks me is in both occassions it feels really fishy... But I will cover that in my reviews. I really hate to do something like write a negative review of a member since it will undoubtably hurt feelings, but I hope it's fair to say that it's not my fault the review is being written but rather that the member created the review himself by way of his actions, and I would be the one amiss should I keep it from the forum.

Thanks ken... I will consider that. The ironic part is that despite all my loudmouthing about honest reviews I was actually holding back because I didn't want to make bad blood on the forum... especially because it's not like it was going to make the seller turn around and change his mind. But I suppose it really is for the best of the forum to do so regardless... Thanks for the response.

Yeah, I love photoshopping but would want to know when the cutoff is...

UPDATE: The first review has been posted here (actually the other transaction happened first but this is just the one I put up first) http://www.rwg.cc/members/index.php?showtopic=15946 The second member review can be read here http://www.rwg.cc/members/index.php?showtopic=15949 Both are rather long... To have them accept an offer, take payment, then end up not selling to you? I have made offers on two watches from two users in the members section, had the offer accepted, sent payment (deposit in one case, full in the other) then had the member tell me hours later, sorry, sold to someone else. In once case someone came in later and offered more money and in the other apparently someone paid before me even though after sending payment I got confirmation the watch was mine. I suppose it's up to the seller ultimately which way a sale goes, but in every other business I have been in, once you say sold, it's sold... you don't take offers anymore and you don't confirm that payment is accepted if you aren't sure... I am asking because it's very frustrating... it's one thing to find out it's sold already or something, but once you are told it's a go it's really unpleasant to have it reversed on you. If this is business as normal in the members section I will probably just give up on it and stick to dealers, but would like to know to save myself the frustration in the long run.

Every time I think I will be away from one of my forums, it always turns out I still end up back at the forums, just less sleep

I thought the GMT2 said Swiss Made at 6? Which China town are you talking about? Not SF by chance?

I so hope a good casino royale version comes out... This looks very promising and it would seem the CR would follow naturally...

My (uneducated) position on all this is: As long as these watches are available fairly easily at these prices, it doesn't make much sense to have them serviced if they are working well. However I would keep an eye on it, and at the slightest sign of something going wrong, stongly consider whether you want to get it serviced or run it into the ground. The upside of this is you may well have your watch last 5+ years, and you may be able to get another of the same watch when it dies for cheap, and you may be able to swap in an ETA (or whatever is on the market in 5 years) if it suites you for near the price of a service. The downside is that you may not be able to get the watch anymore at all, there may not be ETAs available and it may be beyond repair at that point. So if you like the watch and it's nice to have, but it won't kill you if it dies and you can't get it fixed, no biggie. Save yourself a few hundred $$$... and hope you get lucky. If it's the watch you love, always wanted and think is totally awesome, spend a few hundred to drop in an ETA or get it serviced. You are still WAY ahead of the game on a gen. I think of dept store watches as the toasterization of the watch world, ie now they are disposable instead of maintainable. Reps are sort of similar vein. I work in the computer world and the same is happening: Used to be you spent thousands and bought the best computer you could afford so you could hold off on upgrades and get the most from your system. Take good care of it, pay to have it maintained, cleaned, and serviced (this is more on the software side than the hardware, but physical cleaning of computers is something that should happen to prolong your computers life too). That wasn't cheap, and it's still not. Like The Zigmeister I charge quit a bit per hour to do what I do, and sometimes that amounts to a can of air and opening your computer up, running some software to organize and keep the filesystem in good shape etc... easy to do if you know how, but expensive. Today, that's all going out the window. You don't buy the most expensive computer you can afford, becuase the cheapest one on the shelf will serve your pursposes just fine 90% of the time. You don't take care of it, because in 3-5 years you will buy a new one for the price of servicing it now. Everything involved in the expensive upkeep of computers was based around getting 5-10 years of life from a computer... well that's just not desireable anymore... Now you buy a computer, back your files up every now and then, and when it breaks buy a new computer with better parts for what it would cost to fix your old computer. You almost WANT your computer to die so you can justify getting a new one. That's kind of what reps and dept store watches are with the caveat that reps are less dependable in terms of whether you will be able to get them at any given time. Funny story, I bought my first car about 6 years ago, it was a cheap civic with almost 200k miles on it. I intentionally do not take good care of it, it was a planned failure: Buy car cheap now, in 2 or 3 years when it dies, buy better car becuase I can afford it then. The thing runs like a champ on one oil change a year and no maintenance... any car mechanic will tell you this is death to an engine... well it's apparently very slow, very cost effective death... I am glad I never got it serviced... I bought it as a 2 year car and it's becomming a 7 year car... I WANT it to fail. So if you buy watches looking at them as 1-2 year investments, don't get them serviced, it makes no sense. As someone who works with computers my view on the damages of failed maintenance are sekwed... I ONLY see computers when lack of maintenance has caused damage... there are thousands of computers in my vicinity that don't get maintenance that probably work a decade. So while I could tell you horror stories and explain how bad it could be, bear in mind where I stand. The Zigmeister isn't in quite the same situation, but almost any expert and hobbiest probably understands and fears the negatives much more than the average person will. So to wrap it up: If it's really special to you, treat it like it is. If it's a nice toy that you can replace someday, treat it like it is. It's a gamble like everythigne else in life, consider the factors, then decided how much you are willing to pay to offset the risk of loosing that item. If I had the SMP Pro Chrono with proper he valve and bracelet that you can't get anymore, I would proably have it serviced (assuming I really like it). If I have a Daytona, which will probably be available as long as reps are, and which probably won't even last long with a service, I am not getting it serviced. My 21j asian sub... not getting serviced becaues an ETA swap will be the same price. If and when that changes (ie ETAs are no longer available) I will reconsider. It may be too late then, but that's the gamble I am willing to take. And I have no qualms with admitting, in fact I come right out and say it openly, I am not a collector, I am an aquirer. For most of my life, my material joy has come not from having, or even from using, but from getting. I am a shopoholic if you will. I fully understand that of $1000 in reps, $200-300 may get some serious wrist time, but most will go in a box, never to be worn again. And most likely the joy of the wrist time and the box time will never be more than the joy of the purchase was... That's just how I am, I am an immediate gratification, shopoholic. So for me servicing holds less value than for most...

Yes I noticed that second set of numbers or whatever nearthe first large set... signing off as they work on it makes sense... although I am not sure what the need would be for that kind of record keeping... does it make a difference down the road who worked on it last? I always liked this watch, I actually carried it around for a while when I was younger... at that point it worked a little bit, but I gave up on it when it became totally unreliable (it's also a bit feminine for my taste and besides I had a nice Casio Databank watch anyway ) and famous or not, old or not, valuable or not, it's definitely cherished simply because it was my grandmothers but this added bit of history to the watch and knowing it truly is old makes it all the more interesting! I will definitely enjoy it and thanks for the kind words and help! It will have to wait until after TG but I can't wait to get it serviced!