By-Tor

Very nice 16610!!!

Enjoy!

Glad to have you here Robert. Have fun, and don't spend everything at once.

Good Wednesday morning... I'm watching NHL hockey game San Jose Sharks vs. Calgary Flames from the SopCast right now... and wearing this:

@Dani:

Do you somehow visualize that you're calling the shots around here? Do you think there's one set of rules for everyone else, and one set specifically for you?

Just a few days ago you were the center of another drama, threatening to leave the forum... and now you're constantly stirring up trouble again... running around and calling people "crybabies", etc.

And you made your point clear in this thread. About 12 times already. We have been cutting you some extra slack, because you're a longtime member and a respected trader. But enough is enough, this forum is not an AOL warez/flame chatroom or kindergarten.

I suggest you drop the personal attacks and confrontational posts, or you'll receive a timeout.

It got very personal on what I feel is a long standing member of the fora (a paying contributor) and to allow members to hold his feet to the fire for 3 pages was despicable in my opinion. Several of the members who were most critical of his sales thread are not even paying members of this forum. PMs should have been sent by administrators here advising him to adjust his post with content or price accordingly. It was not. Chad pleaded for mods to step in, and delete. Even his topic title was changed to reflect this request. His request went denied. At the very least the post should have been set invisible until the Admin could evaluate and advise accordingly.

If we start to delete or set all unpleasant/controversial threads invisible, it will cause even bigger problems. Then the membership starts screaming "censorship". It has happened before. When I saw the thread for the first time, it was no longer a sales thread, when the item and the descriptions were deleted from the initial post... it was just an ugly, personal flamefest. That's why I closed it... because threads like that have ALWAYS BEEN TREATED in similar manner.

Perhaps we need to arrange a vot

Leaving the post up in the sales forum and raking me over the coals is certainly shocking to me.

We don't delete or censor any controversial/problematic threads and sweep them "under the carpet". I told you that yesterday in PM. Things don't work like that here. If you think it's personal, there's nothing I can do. But it's not.

Why did Chad's post get so much attention, when we have had 2 PAM's advertized, not once but listed twice now, for $1500 or close to 3 times what the watch cost new.

These two PAM's have nothing done to them... but the asking price is 3 times the new cost, and no one says a word (well I did, but it was concerning a $15 freebie...)

Do we have two standards? Ignore certain overpriced ad's, but jump on others??

Good question. I have no idea why it was just Chad's thread that "exploded" like that. Maybe everything just started from the "wrong foot", and it snowballed from there?

I understand both parties perfectly. Just like Two-Tone said, there is not one good solution available.

This is not an ordinary watch forum, and the whole community is very different from TimeZone or WatchUSeek, where people are selling genuines. There are lots of variation between the replica models, and buying the good ones really requires a lot of research and knowledge. I have no idea about Hublots, so I don't know who was right or wrong yesterday.

But I have seen some misrepresented items for sale on the RWG, and also watches that have been grossly overpriced. I mean, what should the membership do when they see a "MBW" modern SeaDweller for $700? Watch that's completely OUTDATED... and the new, superior version is available for $250 new from all the dealers. Or some poor bastard who has paid $1100 for a MBW 1680 with RedBigJoe's snake oil treatment? It's only natural that members want to get a reasonable amount of money back from their "investment". It's not necessarily a "scam attempt", just outrageously overpriced watch.

Should everybody just stay quiet, and wait for some gullible poor newbie bastard to step into the trap, and pay a ridiculous amount of money for a watch like that... and then laugh at his stupidity because he didn't know the history of the board, or do enough research?

Difficult question... but like I said, this place is not TimeZone. This is a big grey area marketplace, where more or less shady characters trade counterfeit items. Call it "honor among thieves" if you want, but we are under the impression that the majority of the board thinks it's important that older members protect the new ones. Even from the bad member trades. And our decision between these two bad options (open or closed sales forum) is based on that.

So... the current situtation is that If you feel you can't handle the replies (and possible heat) in the sales forum, you better stay out of the kitchen. There will definitely be unfair comments and thread crapping in the future as well. We try, but we can't always call them out... or step in immediately.

Believe me, we don't make the decisions like this because "we feel like it", we're not any kind of Oracles here. Our decisions just reflect the membership's opinions and feelings. If this turns out to be a bad decision, and the sales forum will degenarate into the Wild West, you can be sure that we'll reconsider it. Nothing is carved in stone here, but unlike the membership we can't just endlessly debate about this... we always have to make some kind of decision. And it will never satisfy everyone.

The SMP Chrono is easily one of the best reps out there, but it has 2 basic flaws: Pearl (size, placement, color), and the datewheel.

Not all of them. The very first batch of the SMP Chrono came with the ETA datewheel. Well, at least mine did.

Pics here.

I'd love to update my SMP Chrono with a gen insert too. Wonder if they're available somewhere, and at what price...

I agree. This kind of CRAP is totally unacceptable on a $300 watch.

Just shot this one. I'm not very happy with this photo technically, as the corners are rather noisy... but it shows the "sparkling" effect on the Noob YM dial quite nicely.

I never liked the XXL watches.

40mm is just about perfect watch size. That's probably why I've been wearing Rolex a lot lately. 42mm can still look good and balanced, but anything beyond that... no thanks.

I wanted to get one TT watch into my collection, and I was thinking the TT Chronomat Evolution. But when I heard it's 44mm I changed my mind. That's a "dressy model" and it's way oversized with that kind of diameter (imho). Looks like I'm keeping the TT Sub instead.

GQ, Esquire and all those magazines are trying to turn men into women. They might as well come with a free vagina.

Yeah, it's called "metrosexual".

The replica uses a replica 7750 movement that really requires servicing before use to ensure there are no issue with the assembly

"Requires servicing" is bit of an exaggeration, especially with the new A7750... imho.

Never serviced any of my 7750, and they all run great (after years of use). One watch has a low power reserve, but it has been like that since the day 1.

Other than that, you make good points.

Wow, you have quite a wife!

Great story, great watch. Not much to add, except "Enjoy!!!" (I'm sure you will).

This simply doesn't come off.

Yes, I've seen many examples of this rare variation of the GMT dial. First time I hear it's called "error dial" though.

This nice guide deserves a BUMP!

There are still MANY very good reps available in the $100 price category. Some are every bit as good as the more expensive ones.

chrgod's guide is excellent resource, especially for the new members.

PS: I tried to PM you but I don't think it went threw. Are you accepting PM's?

Yes, I'm accepting PM's and already replied yours, I was just "out of office". Thanks man.

Yeah, but there's not much we can do... except stop buying.

And you know... it doesn't work.

Personally, I'm not going to pay more than $350 for ANY unmodified replica watch.

Saturday watch: The always amazing SMP Chrono.

@Andreas: Personally, I think RWG already has WAAAAYYYY too many subforums. We already have lots of subforums which rarely get used at all.

If I could decide alone, I would make the forum layout even simpler and get rid of even more subforums (that we already have). This doesn't mean your idea isn't good (in principle), I'd just want to keep the forums as simple and user friendly as possible. And like Pugs said, we already have the gen section (which doesn't get that much traffic mind you)

I think there should be very heavy reasoning (and demand), if we even consider creating of ANY new subcategories. And usually when people post to these obscure subforums, they rarely get many responses at all... BECAUSE PEOPLE WON'T READ THESE AREAS. It's simple as that.

This is a bit OT, but here's a good example of completely useless subforum (that we don't have here):

Eyecandy

We have Rolex, PAM, TAG, Breitling, IWC, Omega and "Other Brands" subforums. If someone wants to search pics of the new Omega rep model, he can go directly to the Omega section and find absolutely EVERYTHING there. Search feature is one of the most important things on RWG, so where the hell do you need a duplicate "Eyecandy" subforum to make searching of all pictures and information twice as complicated? I say keep it simple stupid!

PS: People suggested a "Vintage forum" year ago or so... but we tanked the subforum just because we didn't want to make searching the forum a complete mess. And that area would have been just 99% Rolex MBW, so creating a "Vintage Forum" just for the sake of having yet another subforum didn't make any sense. There was absolutely no reason why the vintage MBW Rolexes couldn't be discussed in the Rolex subforum. And that's exactly the same reason why discussing Seikos and Citizens couldn't be done in the (already existing, and already low-traffic) Genuine Watch forum section.

and in plain english that whould be?

Click my signature (link to my review section) and read the Noobmariner article there. It's the best out of the box 16610 replica out there. Available with both ETA and Asian.

Happy hunting!

I really like your taste... it's a lot similar to mine.

That TT Chronomat is a beauty!!! What's the diameter?

Beauties... that grey BCE is of course my favorite.

What a great watch!