beancounter

Thanks, all. I've bookmarked authenticwatches, too. Great find. I'll try and get a picture when the watch returns to the shop. I can see welding the clasp back together and getting it to be functional, but I can't see easily repairing the link(s) in the band, and making them look like anything other than pieces of metal that got hit by lightning. Between specialty welding, shaping, polishing and the rest, the final cost will probably be right around the cost of the replacement band from authenticwatches.

I was visiting my watchsmith today. I've had a couple of ongoing projects with him, a franken of the IWC 3607 (gen dial, Swiss 7750, great case I got on a crummy rep version in Shenzhen) and a Wakmann triple reg, triple date chrono restoration. While I was there, a jeweler in the same building walks in with a genuine titanium Seamaster with titanium band. The band was completely broken just above the clasp. Titanium is really strong and really light, of course. I asked to take a look, and it was pretty obvious what had happened, but I wondered why the owner was alive to care about fixing his watch. A link above the broken part of the band was about 25% gone, there was scorching and burning all around that, and the clasp had burn marks all around the broken portion. Basically, it looked like someone had hooked the watch up to an arc welder and hit the switch, just to see what would happen. The story is that the owner is a helicopter pilot. He was working on the engine, and accidentally touched the band on his Omega to one post of the battery and the frame of the helicopter at the same time. I figure he probably got the surprise of his life, right about then. Luckily, he managed to short the band over a short enough distance and through a small enough amount of metal that it heated up and vaporized fast. If he had done the same thing over a bigger piece of the band itself, it probably would have heated up slowly enough to give him a really severe burn. Lucky for him, all the watch did is go bang and fall off his wrist. Now, here's the question. This is a $2,000 watch. Omega wants $1,200 for a replacement band (this is an older Seamaster, case number is 168.1623), which seems a bit steep. The watch is now this guy's lucky watch, but $1,200 to fix it is a bit much. The jeweler is going to try to have it laser welded, but titanium isn't easy to do anything with, and that won't fix the big gouge in one link. So, did/do any of our collectors have the ability to source a replica titanium band for a titanium Seamaster, and will it fit on a gen without ten hours of work? Buying a $300 replica to use the band on the gen head seems a pretty good option compared to $1,200 for the replacement from Switzerland. Any assistance appreciated.

I don't post much, but have been a member of RWG and its predecessor for a long time. Which reminds me, at some point I need to take the ten seconds and start paying the board back for some of the knowledge I've gathered here. Over the months and years, I've dealt with a number of the dealers, and a number of members. Edge is absolutely right about his main point; I am most concerned about the fact that some dealers lied to this community about the specifications and quality of their products, and they seem to be able to do so and get away with it. I don't really care what price gets charged for what watch with whatever specs. In that regard, even if some dealers are colluding and fixing prices, market forces will eventually win out. Charge $300 for something that costs $80 to make, someone else is going to figure out a way to make the same thing and sell it for $299, and down the slippery slope to competitive pricing you go. The only way a cartel works in this forum is if the admins are in on the game, and refuse to allow any other dealers to post. We know that ain't true, and ain't happening, so price fixing is a temporary game, at best. What really rankles is that some of the "trusted" dealers have been outright lying about what their products actually are. Saying something is an ETA 2892 means, at least to me, that it is a movement built from an ETA 2892 ebauche. I don't care if it is assembled in China, Switzerland, or Swaziland. If it was assembled by gnomes under a mountain in the Alps, let me know that and I might even be willing to pay the premium, but at least telling me it is an ETA 2892 gives me some comfort about the quality of mechanical components. But tell me it is an ETA 2892, and slip in a Seagull clone, and I feel cheated; in that case, tell me it is a "Seagull clone of an ETA 2892", and I will go find a The Zigmeister review to tell me if that movement is worth spending money on. Tell me the watch has an ETA 2892 and it comes equipped with a movement pulled out of a 1970 Chinese army watch, and I feel more than cheated, I know I have been ripped off. This board was supposed to help prevent replica watch ripoffs. What it looks like right now is that RWG is helping to support these dealers and their fraudulent practices. So, why is the Board, which is really the community of members, allowing those who have lied to this community to continue to post their goods for sale here? Until those dealers who lied to this community not only apologize publicly for doing so, but also make good on refunds to those who bought goods based on their lies, ban them. We do it for members that negatively impact this community, shouldn't the same apply to dealers whose actions negatively impact a substantial number of members, too? I believe others are also right about the fact that the dealers in question can change their web site names without issue, so long as they inform this board and a select few others. This community is a significant source of revenue for the replica dealer community. If we want to change the way those dealers deal with us, hit them in the wallet. Ban them until they make good on their past fradulent practices. Note this does not mean the members of any dealer network, without question, but the specific dealers who misrepresented, no, LIED, about what they were selling to us. And note I don't have any axe to grind on this, I didn't buy a B&R with Chinese Army movement, my last purchases were driven simply by looking for the best price with a dealer I believed I could trust to deliver the product promised, and those items were exactly what was advertised. But if we can't, as a community, trust a dealer to tell us the truth about what they are marketing, we have no obligation as a community to make it easy for them to rip us off.

Thanks all. If I was wasting my time alone, I might take the time to go and do a crawl through a whole market. Given that it's one of our finance guys, and his time is actually supposed to be used to do something that brings in revenue, I'll stick with a note to Sichuan and questions about what kind of quantity discount I might get on a pick-up order.

One of my colleagues is off to China with a shopping list of reps and other knock-off items in hand. Thing is, we know where to go if we are in Hong Kong or in Shenzhen, but he is headed to some new places for us, namely Shanghai and Guangzhou. Anyone know where to get started doing some looking for reps in these two cities?

Plus 7 more...1020 total.

Love it. What movement is going to power this DW? Is this going to have working 60 s/30 m/12 h sub dials?

Great to see the new home. Here's hoping this can turn out to be THE place on the web to discuss rep watches. Many, many thanks to all those who worked hard to put this together.