atomic_doug

Ah, it's so good to see the Ingenieurs back to normal size. It's a beautiful piece. I would totally buy this. Hell, I might even buy the gen.

The Noob-made 292 with dial with the pig is the most accurate one. The one without the pig has the text misplaced. (It's basically a pig dial minus the pig itself.) It's a very good rep, made with the proper case materials and the right ceramic shade. Service the movement and get the hands and dial re-lumed to OEM spec and it's effectively perfect.

Great choice! The PO is a fine watch, no doubt about it, but the Seamaster 300 is one of those truly iconic dive watches. Its design language is expressed in nearly every watch Omega makes these days.

Looks amazing. If ever there was a "super-rep", this is it. How good is the lume, though?

Beautiful from the front, but dreadful from behind. "Officne"? really? The 253 Regatta looks better, but the rotor is still dreadful. If it doesn't have a closed caseback, I don't even get my hopes up anymore.

Ugh, I hate waiting. I have a gen 1520 movement that will make a pretty sweet 5513 with this case.

I can't say I like it. The face is too busy, the fake-patina just irritates me, and the whole thing looks really fragile. I thought Panerais were supposed to be simple, tough, and un-pretentious. This one doesn't look like any of that.

Actually, I would only need one: the 5218-201/A. (Assuming, of course, that "modern" means anything made after the original Panerai factory stopped producing for the Italian armed services.) As much as I love the brand (and I've had up to six Panerai at one time, both rep and gen), the look is very...unified. One is really all you need. For other types of watch functionality, like GMT watches or chronographs, there are much better choices. Among post-Vendome buyout pieces, I think the 360 and the 000 are 'essential' pieces, as are the 232 and the 127. Anything with too many complications or an automatic movement just isn't "Panerai" enough for me.

Since Rolex is not buying up and destroying the old ones, there will always be old pieces around for those who prefer them. Sure, a Double Red Sea Dweller will be hard to come by, but I don't think it was ever that common when new. However, you can purchase and re-furbish any Datejust, Explorer, GMT Master or Sub for less than the price of a new one. It's not like Rolex was ever a small-volume producer. Had Rolex gone under and its legendary status remained, all of these pieces would be worth more, I think.

If Rolex had stayed true to what grouchy collectors (myself included) wanted, they wouldn't be in business right now. Unfortunately, a company needs to evolve. The more iconic a piece is, the more even a subtle change looks wild and radical. Look at the Sub, the biggest change was they made the dots on the dial slightly bigger and every collector lost their heads/ These crazy design Daytonas are such a tiny fraction of their sales, even within the Daytona line. I'm sure there were some Rolex collectors fifty years ago looking at the new Submariner and thinking, "40mm?! Who needs a watch that big? If you've such poor eyesight that you need a wrist-clock like this, you shouldn't be diving."

I second the 2824. That's what I used on my last 5500EXP. It fits well.

Reps of gold watches are always dodgy; you can spot a fake gold watch a mile away. In this case, though, look at pics of gen Polos. The case has the 'ridges' that follow the lines of the rest of the piece. No ridges here. In any case, though, it's a neat reminder of the styles of the 80's.

Do you have a yacht? Do you participate in yacht racing? If so, the watch is practically made for your needs and you can easily forgive its visual shortcomings since it's just so useful. As a watch, though, it's as ugly as the inside of a hotdog.

I would like to see the president wear something a little more tasteful as well, at least a Datejust. (Or better still, an American-made RGM. ) Of course, I can hear already the pundits shrieking about how a man who makes 400k per year wearing a basic Rolex is 'elitist'. My hope is that he wears the secret service watch because it has some kind of chip in it that allows them to keep better track of him or somethng.

Yeah, it is a travesty. It's not like Switzerland (and China) don't churn out scores of 6497's every hour of every day. The only reason to take the old movements is so the hipster who ends up buying one can say that it's "vintage" without being 100% disingenuous. My local watchmaker (he prefers clockmaker, though he does both) once gave me a thirty minute lecture/rant on how putting pocket watch movements in wristwatches is just laziness on the part of the designer. (He's not too impressed with Panerai, to say the least.) "A wristwatch should be small and thin. The case should be made to fit the movement."

I was wearing my rep Panerai 5218-201/A and a guy who was wearing a PAM 005 saw it from five seats down at the bar. He comes over and asks to see it. I told him right away it was a rep, but he seemed not to believe me. (It's certainly not because I dress like someone who could afford a $50k watch, haha) Apparently he had no idea people repped pre-V pieces too. Guy: "No, see, the numbers don't glow anymore. The real ones don't glow because they used tritium." Me: "Yeah, yellow model paint doesn't glow either and that's what I used when I painted the dial." He seemed a little disappointed that he wasn't able to see his holy grail in the flesh, but also astounded that reps could be that accurate. This guy was the type that ogled every pre-V thread on paneristi and dreamed.

The price hikes remind me of a (probably apocryphal) story of Colin Chapman, the father of Lotus cars. He would take a car and to make it faster, would "add lightness". He started removing parts from the car and when it collapsed under its own weight, would then put that part back, satisfied the car was as light as it could be. Rolex is the same way: they will keep raising prices year after year until someday people will just refuse to buy them...

the 292 is also an excellent rep. It's a ceramic case, though, if you want that. Silver, no, but sandwich dial, yes. Now if you take the dial from the 292 and put it into the case of the 380, you've got a pretty good 183.

39mm is perfect for Messi, who is a tiny little man. He's listed at 5'7", but he's closer to 5'5" in real life. A full-sized ROO on him would look like a toddler wearing his daddy's hat and shoes. ...and also there's probably a move towards more 'reasonably' sized pieces. I can't imagine some of the traditionalists at AP aren't thinking that perhaps they need to begin to move away from the ROO and get back to properly being one of the Big 3.

Good eye, Akira. If you connect all the dial landmark points with MSPaint, it does appear that the spacing of the subdials is even, but the minute register is smaller. I think that's why the whole dial looks slightly left-shifted. Absolutely beautiful watch, no doubt, but at that price it should be perfect.

It actually happens on the gens as well. It's not as common because the gens have deeper cuts in the bezels, but a co-worker of mine with a gen 29 has worn away some of the paint in his '6' as well. (FWIW, he's astounded at the accuracy of the Noob 29M.)

GW paints are fine for Space Marines, but I wouldn't use them on an FGD dial. The Vallejo paints have a much higher pigment density, meaning you can get greater color coverage with thinner paint. (For models, this means never obscuring a figure's face. For a dial, it doesn't have the same detail, but it does mean you'll only have to do one pass over an index. This is important, because it's the touch-up where all the mistakes happen. Future is now called "Pledge Wood Floor Finish with Future Shine". You can only get it in big bottles, but if you have wood floors it's a nice bonus. I bought my bottle of it eons ago. (In the UK, it's called "Klear".) You don't need a lot. When I'm painting, I'll mix up a batch of five-six parts water and one part Future. That's what you use when I'm watering down your paints. Clean water for washing brushes and Future water for mixing paints. Once you've got your color mixed up and watered, you load up your brush and make a single clean pass through the index. If it's a curved number, you can do it in two strokes, since the paint will flow instead of quickly drying and lumping up.

Thanks! The dial indices were just raw brass before?! Ha! Now I'm really glad I painted them. I used Vallejo brand model acrylics. (If there are any tabletop miniature fans on the board, they'll be familiar with the brand) It was a mixture of bleached bone, golden yellow, and a tiny hint of fiery orange to get the Non-matching Tritium color. I used a drop of Future floor wax in the paint to help it flow better in the recesses. (It cuts the surface tension in the water.) When the paint flows well, you don't actually have to 'brush' the paint into the recess. It's more like 'placing' some paint into the recess and it will flow to fit the shape of the index. You just need to draw the brush along the shape of the index and it will pull the paint up the walls of the index, which is gen correct. (It would be incorrect if you were doing a pre-A dial, though, since the sides of the cutouts weren't painted.) Also, a #2 liner brush. Also, always water down your paints. The paints are acrylic, so they will never age. However, they have a slightly 'dusty' look that the gens don't have. The varnishing will solve this and also cut down on a lot of the dial sheen. Projectologist has been helping me with the varnishing step. This one is my super-anal-retentive project that is never quite done and has been through nearly a dozen iterations. The only constant has been the movement.

A 1970 Rolex 5500 Air King with a 5500 Explorer dial and hand-set. If I didn't have such a slim wrist, this would seem positively tiny.

I prefer to rep pieces that are out of production. A rep of a Panerai 112 or a Rolex Sub C seems like...well...faking. A Pre-V Panerai, though, is different to me in that the company that made it isn't around anymore so there isn't even an option of buying new. The same goes with Rolex MilSubs or 1016 Explorers. Rolex isn't going to make any more of them, so...why not?