tode1640

So what you are saying is that it is obvious that it is a rep just because the. seller is stupid - no feedback, description plagiarised from rep sites etc.? If he had used an account with feedback, put it in a box and wrote his own description - would it have been impossible to call? Sheesh, that is scary! This caught my eye because I have the noob version of this. A lovely watch, and it does look identical to these pictures. However, I had always assumed that someone who really knew their PAMs could tell it wasn't gen at a glance! All in all a good reason to never buy a watch from eBay! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'm not doubting you, but I'm intrigued to know why you guys are so sure this is a rep. Other than the lack of feedback, it looks pretty good to my uneducated eye! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I have been told that in some countries(not necessarily the US), Rolex ADs provide a free "service" of routinely authenticating all watches they get their hands on. Then, if they think it is fake, they send it to Rolex to investigate. If you wanted it back then you would be dealing with Rolex. Good luck with that. You can avoid any risk, though, by not taking reps into an AD. If your watchmaker isn't an AD the worst that can happen is that he might refuse to work on the rep.

I think that this concept of a watch as an heirloom is great - with proper care, a good watch could easily last generations. However, I only hope that he appreciates it! In Britain, at least, the younger generation (i.e. teenagers and people in their twenties) rarely wear watches, and usually care far more about their smartphones. I am British, but I live in Asia - and the difference is fascinating. In Asia, the majority of young kids wear watches - and a large proportion of these are big name brands (teenagers tend to wear really cheap reps, affluent guys in their twenties wear good reps or gens and for older men watches are serious status symbols). In Britain, young people don't often wear watches - and the most comments that I have ever had about my watches have been from British youth (I work in a place that brings me into contact with a lot of young people), who think that I am eccentric to be wearing a watch when I have a mobile phone that can tell me the time. These young people don't know the difference between a Rolex and a Timex - they neither know nor care about reps, they just think that watches are eccentric. Living in Asia has been a real breath of fresh air in this respect - it is great that people of all ages really do know about and appreciate their watches.

As others have said, if it is like most A21Js then that is seriously overpriced. However, that is because A21J is usually put into a mediocre, or worse, watch. I have always thought that this is a pity - it is a very decent movement and there is no reason why it shouldn't be put into much better reps than it usually is. Were that to be the case, I would have no problem paying that sort of price.

The vast majority of reps have flaws in the details as a result of poor QC for all of the reasons mentioned here. If a factory does produce a near perfect rep (and I'm sure that they do from time to time) then what sense would it make to sell it to the TDs for a few hundred dollars? If it is that good, they could easily sell it as a grey-market gen for, say, 50% the price of the gen. I'm sure that this happens. In fact, you can see hints of it on this forum. Take the Yachtmaster that TC has been offering recently. I haven't seen one, but people rave about it and how close it is to a gen. Now TC gets them because he goes to China and knows the watchmakers personally. If you read his blog, it is fairly obvious that they are quite reluctant to sell them - even TC has to do a lot of wheeling and dealing. Why do you think this is? I am fairly sure that it is because these same factories are making fake grey-market gens. The watches that end up with the TDs are either going to be the ones that aren't good enough to cut it on the grey market, or else made at the lowest possible cost with cheap materials and non-existent QC.

I have had a couple of A21J movements serviced and regulated. One of them came back accurate to about 10s per day, the other is outstanding - accurate to about 5s per week. However, in both cases, though, the watchsmith (different ones) gave me a health warning that it was at my own risk if they couldn't get any improvement or even broke it. I think these movements are wildly variable in quality. The good ones can be great, but there are some poorer ones out there that might be difficult to regulate or might easily break when they are disassembled.

Hmm... that, to me, sounds like a dodgy dealer trying it on. In almost all countries there is consumer protection legislation that gives customers rights to a refund if goods aren't of merchantable quality. This is over and above any obligations of the warranty - it is a fundamental legal right.

A replica Rolex Submariner obtained from TC - an amateur/semi-pro watchsmith/importer and Rolex enthusiast. His subs are widely regarded as the best rep subs available out of the box today.

I said "closer to", not identical. The point that I was making was that small Homage companies, like Chinese rep factories, don't have the resources of a huge corporation like Rolex or even Seiko. I don't doubt that they are made by outstanding craftsman with excellent quality control - but the very best Chinese factories can be pretty good too (and I believe that TC personally inspects and tests every watch he ships out). Yes, of course, that is the key difference. The very best reps might come close to some of the great homage watches in terms of the actual physical item. I say might, I'm not saying that they do! However, they will never come close to the after sales support offered by even the tiniest legitimate company - simply because that company is legitimate. If you buy a rep from an illegal dealer, then you don't even have the most basic statutory rights.

It depends what you mean by "quality". If you simply mean build quality - the quality of materials used, the precision of the engineering, and consistency of the finished product - then it is conceivable that some super reps could be better than some homages. A TC sub will never be able to come close to the quality of a gen, simply neither the Chinese factories nor TC have the resources of Rolex. I also very much doubt that they could come close to the quality of a homage produced by a large corporation like Seiko. They may well cut corners on the precision and the materials to produce a low cost product, but they are a large enough organisation to have good QA and a very high standard of consistency. In the case of small homage companies such as MKII, then there is a better chance that a TC might equal or exceed them - their resources are going to be far closer to those of a Chinese rep factory. I fact, I believe that some small watch makers outsource their manufacture to China - so they might even be made in the same factories as reps! I have never handled a TC, but most people who have seem to love them, so I don't doubt that the build quality is superb. However, there are interesting stories about fitting gen inserts - sometimes they seem to fit flawlessly, but sometimes they need to be sanded. This speaks volumes about the consistency - there are obviously subtle differences between individual watches. This would never happen with a large homage manufacturer. However, if by "quality" you mean the overall quality of the experience of buying a watch then no rep can ever compete with a homage. The very fact that homage watches are made by completely legal and above board companies means that you have assurance of help if something goes wrong. You will have a legally enforceable warranty and, certainly in the case of big companies, very good after sales service. With reps, you can never even be sure exactly who made it. Because what they are doing is illegal, the factories don't publish their addresses and, in all probability, even the dealers don't know exactly who they are. If you buy a watch from TC, all that you will have is the assurance that he has the reputation of being a very decent guy and will probably help you out if things go wrong. That may count for a lot, but it is a long way short of the sort of after sales service that you will get from a company like Seiko. Ultimately, though, you pay your money and take your choice. Whatever gives you the most satisfaction.

Really, you can't generalise - it is whatever makes you happy. A TC is likely to look nicer than most homage watches (although many are very nice, they don't quite have the beauty of the Rolex design - it isn't all about the label). However, a TC will be less reliable than a homage watch from a respectable company that comes with after sales service and a warranty. But ultimately, they are both watches - so which do you prefer. It is like asking the question - should you buy one gen or twenty reps, there is no right answer - it is down to what will bring you the most pleasure.

I have wondered about those before, but I don't understand what you mean. Are you saying that they are flawed gens that failed the QA (i.e. effectively factory seconds)? But you say they are not made with gen parts - therefore are they flawed reps? If that is the case, then why are they so expensive?

Is his 1:1 non-Chinese rep a genstein? I don't doubt that if money is no object then there are such things available. I also have no doubt that, barring the serial number, these could potentially fool an AD. After all, they are entirely gen parts just not assembled by the watch company. Since many watch manufacturers don't make a centralised database available to Ads, a really well assembled genstein could potentially be indistinguishable. I think that this sort of bet is pissing in the wind. This guy obviously knows he can win, so there is some trick going on - and my guess is that he knows of someone who is selling one or two gensteins.

I can't believe that anyone is stupid enough to do this. In most countries customs really don't care about a single watch in bubble wrap. It may be contraband - but frankly they have better things to do with their time. What they do care about is things like drugs and explosives. Toys that show up on X-Ray machines as having something hidden inside are always going to be examined very thoroughly, just in case they do contain drugs or explosives. Once the customs guys have gone to the trouble of opening your package and cutting open a toy, only to find a fake watch - they are bound to confiscate the watch, pretty much on general principle!

PayPal, because it is so vast, automates most of its security features. Unfortunately, the automation is quite dumb and all sorts of innocent things trigger alarms. When an alarm is triggered a "hold" gets put on the transaction until it is either investigated by PayPal or (more often) one or other of the parties gets on to them and moans like anything. I am a British expat living in Malaysia. PayPal cannot get its head around the fact that I have a British e-mail address and bank account and yet connect to it from Malaysia and use a Malaysian address with a Malaysian credit card. Almost every transaction I have with them results in some sort of hold - sometimes they take hours to clear, but sometimes they take weeks. I have lost count of the number of times that they have made me upload scans of my passport! It is bloody annoying, and one of many reasons that I loathe PayPal. Sadly, if you want to use their system you have to play by their rules. Roll on the day that there will be a decent competitor that works the world over.

This guy wasn't hot linking. The link that he provided was to the entire thread. If the board is visible to non-members (which it is) then there isn't anything wrong with that, and it is also impossible to prevent. The board could, of course, be set so that it is only visible to members who log in and that would prevent this sort of thing. That is a policy decision for the board owners, though.

The point is, though, that accidents - spills, and the like - can easily happen. Sure, once people stopped eating radium there were no more obvious cases of radiation sickness. Incidentally, the worst problems were not with the brush lickers, but with their supervisors who used to drink the glowing green paint just to demonstrate quite how "non-toxic" it was! However, even after even after the dangers were realised occasional exposure would still have occurred. This won't cause any short term problems - but it is extremely carcinogenic. How many factory workers in the post 1920s period died of cancer? They might, of course, have died of cancer anyway - but some were, no doubt, due to accidental exposures in the factories. It is quite possible to handle radiochemicals safely. This is often done in research labs, and in some specialised industry. The problem is that in order to do it safely you do need to take fairly extreme (and therefore expensive) precautions. All workers need to have regular medicals, and wear exposure meters. The material itself needs to be handled in sealed cabinets that will contain any vapours and spillage. The workers need to wear protective clothes. The gloves and any equipment that touches the stuff needs to be disposed of carefully (usually by sealing it up and dumping it into a disused coal mine!). There needs to be a lot of paperwork done to track the usage of radioactive material. The work environment needs to be continually monitored, and regularly decontaminated. There need to be emergency procedures in place, in case of any spillage or leak that breaches the normal safeguards. All of this is now a legal requirement for any industry that wishes to use radioactive material. This makes it prohibitively expensive, for many purposes. I am pretty certain that the reason that radium and tritium are no longer used in watches is simply because of the expense of handling it safely in factories. These sort of studies are notoriously difficult to interpret. So called "safe" levels of radiation exposure are often educated guesses. The problem is that cancer is triggered by errors in cell division - one cause of which is radiation. Everyone is continually bombarded with natural radiation, and everyone is at risk of cancer. Exposure to additional radiation does increase the risk of cancer, but it isn't a linear relationship (a thousand times the natural level of radiation doesn't translate into a thousand-fold increase risk of cancer). However, there is a relationship, but it can take decades before this becomes apparent. Therefore, it is extremely difficult to do these sorts of studies and even more difficult to interpret the results. Hence the view of most Health and Safety regulations, that exposure to radiation should be minimised. Radium and tritium (particularly tritium) are also particularly insidious - because they are easily absorbed into the body, which would mean that the exposure to radiation becomes internal - which is harder to spot and far more dangerous than exposure to an external source.

That would be a completely different thing. Stealing someone else's photos is rude, to say the least, not to mention illegal. However, I really don't see that there is ever anything wrong with providing a link to material that someone has chosen to publish on the Internet. If it is publicly available on the Internet, then it is intended for people to see - all that a link is doing is helping people to find it. If you don't want people to see your photographs, then don't post them somewhere that it is publicly available. The important thing is that the link was to a thread - so the photographs could be seen in their original context, and it was obvious who the author is. It is unfortunate that he was linking to a rep site, but as has already been said he probably just googled this and may well not have realised that it is a rep site (or even understood the significance). However, I don't see that there is any harm done. Mind you, if the OP strongly objects, I still suggest an e-mail to him to politely ask him not to do that. The watch didn't sell, so it might well be re-listed at some point.

You are right about that. There are many, many problems in the way that the web works (in fact, don't get me started). Links on the web are indeed simply pointers to resources. They are completely dumb and have no idea of context - this is a very good example of where context is crucial in the interpretation of content. The problem is that the web was never designed to be what it is now - it has grown organically from very simplistic beginnings into a vast unwieldy monster. Far more sophisticated systems have been designed that do address these issues - but none of them have taken off like the web. This means that we are stuck with this sort of thing. You are right that it is scary, but it is a problem of the stupid way in which the system is designed rather than the (probably) well intentioned guy who put up the original link.

Why stop at tritium - radium is vastly superior! You will get a really bright glow that will last the lifetime of the watch (radium has a half life of thousands of years). The snag is that you quite rightly say that you wouldn't work with it yourself. It is possible to work with radioactive materials safely - I have done so. But the precautions would get prohibitively expensive for most commercial manufacturing processes, and the disposal of waste (especially radium) becomes a big issue.

All that a link is, is a pointer as to where to find something. You must remember that anything posted on the Internet is there for the whole world to see. He hasn't taken credit for your work - he is just telling people where to find it, and I don't see that there is anything wrong with that in principle. It is unfortunate drawing attention to this forum on e-bay but, taken out of context, he might not even realise that your pictures are on a rep forum. I would go along with the suggestion that you politely e-mail him and ask him to remove the link because it is inappropriate to be on e-bay.

I am seriously no expert here, but I did think that both WD40 and 3 in 1 were both the kiss of death for watches. I remember reading that the teflon lubricants that are sold in bike shops for lubricating gears and cables could be used for watches. Hopefully someone who knows what they are talking about will confirm or deny this!

Very wise. It is nasty stuff - that is why the watch manufacturers all stopped using it. It is safe enough once in the watch, but there were significant dangers to factory workers. It isn't as dangerous as radium (quite a lot of watch factory workers died from radium poisoning in the early 20th century) - but it is still unpleasant. I handled various tritium compounds when I used to work in a lab, and you need to be quite careful. The gloves that we wore, and the pipettes that sucked the stuff up would all be sealed into drums and treated as low grade nuclear waste. We only handled it inside sealed cabinets, so there was no possibility of it vaporising and getting into the room, and every microlitre had to be accounted for. It would be far too dangerous to touch at home - even if you could get hold of it.

I am pretty sure that it is supposed to be a 270 - it just isn't a very good 270! Also, the A21J will give you the power reserve, but there is no way that it will last for anything like 10 days. I have an A21J 90 - which does last for the 40 hours that the 90s are supposed to last, but there is no way you will get 10 days out of them. Actually the much maligned A21J, is a pretty decent movement. It is a real shame that it isn't often put into better reps - particularly these PR Pams that need it's PR functionality. Cheers, Tim.