davylloyd

Lovely watch, Aerotime. Right up my street!

@ aeromatic, nice watch. What did you use as the base?

Nice to see that you've read through the forum and done some research before you wade in and buy your first rep. Stand by, and hold tight, here comes a whole cavalry full of help.

Cousins UK sell boxed sets of generic Rolex hands to fit Chinese movements, mixed silver and gilt. Don't know what the shipping to Germany would cost though. If you just want a one-off, you could do what I did and use glass paint, a mixture of yellow and brown, over your silver hands. The finished effect comes out like this -

The colour of that watch makes perfect sense.......for the Mayor of Caramel

This is so bloody hilarious! Be honest, how many of you, like me, read down the list and thought 'What a relief!, I thought only I did that'.....

Well my original post was about what I consider the futility of the luxury brands in employing agents to assist customs in searching out and destroying replicas. The debate has now widened into something more interesting, but although I can see many different viewpoints, I have to say nothing here has changed my original stance. I guess you'd find all ends of the spectrum on these pages, just as you would in any walk of life. In the world of gens, there will be people who buy them having spent years pursuing the idea, having researched the market thoroughly, having learned a great deal about the watchmakers art, about what separates one brand or one model from another. At the other end of the scale will be the chinless wonder who has the watch bought for him by a rich daddy, simply to mark his progeny out as a 'have' rather than a 'have not'. He will probably know less about the mechanical marvel strapped around his wrist than he knows about what daddy does for a living, and will care even less than that. The first rep I ever saw was in the early seventies, (yes, of course it was a Rolex!), and in the intervening years, the industry has become much larger, more expert, and more accessible, in spite of, (and maybe even because of), the efforts of the Swiss watch industry. All my instincts lead me to believe that the reason they pursue the rep industry so visibly is to disassociate themselves with the 'tat' that we all buy, to maintain the snob value. As regards the outsourcing of components, I think sometimes the only part that is actually made in Switzerland is the dial. That's why it says so at the bottom

For what they cost, I'd say get a range of loupes in different magnifications. I use a 2.5, a 5, a 10, and a 20. All good for different work.

Nice work, Bonesey. I follow your work over on the other place, but I've never seen the snowflake before. Where did you get the bits?

Artist's acrylic paint, in various shades of ochre, sienna, umber, and of course white. It mixes perfectly with the acrylic medium, and in the tiny amounts used doesn't seem to have too bad an effect on the brightness of the lume. There again, vintage lume probably shouldn't be too bright......

So...... This morning, both watches (and 2 x Montblanc pens) turned up, in a package that has definitely not been opened, and may or may not have been x-rayed. It sat in UK customs for 23 days. Here's a screen grab of the Parcelfarce tracking - I realise I'm a creature of severely limited intellect, so if someone could explain in simple terms, using words of no more than two syllables, what earthly purpose this has served, I'd be eternally grateful.

Probably the best you'll do at $100 would be the 'economy watches' on Silix?

Spot on. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

For sure! It's one of the reasons that the Chopard Mille Miglia is on my shopping list. Nice watch, BTW. Enjoy!

Sorry, I didn't make myself clear. I do expect something will now turn up, I just meant that the delay gave me time to think over how absurd the whole customs/IP infringement/agent thing is.

But the name's on the rep.

I know where you are coming from Andy, but I don't mean they should be cheap. We all know Rolex, for example, make excellent watches, but they are now verging on mass production, and the movements and cases and bracelets on a lot of their models have not incurred any R&D costs in a long long time. I personally find it hard to see how a Submariner is worth twenty or thirty times the cost of a good quality rep. Still, having never owned one myself, I know owners of the gens. will want to put me right.

Around the 15th. August, I ordered the PAM320 and Breitling Avenger that Tony had in his crazy sale. Since the 21st. the order has been at U.K. customs without any updates, letters or phone calls, and then the status updated at 11.14 today, on the EMS website to ‘Released from Customs’ and the Parcelfarce website to ‘Released for UK processing’ and ‘Expected delivery date 14/09/12’. Being the UK Customs and EMS/Parcelfarce, this of course means all bets are still on, ie. I could get 1) nothing at all, or 2) either of the two watches, or 3) both watches (extremely unlikely). The whole episode has given me time to realise what a farce, a complete exercise in futility, this whole episode has been. Not because of Tony’s conduct, because this has been nothing short of perfect – his communication and assurances have been excellent, but because the rest of it has been such a monumental waste of time, effort and money. On another forum, it’s been suggested that a company called TM Eye have been acting on behalf of Richemont SA to protect their intellectual property, their trademarks and so forth, and that this is what has made it difficult at UK Customs with Panerai. No doubt there are other companies doing the same work for Breitling SA and all the other luxury brands. If one or both of my watches had been road-rollered into the tarmac, would I have run off to an AD to order the Gen?. Not a chance! Does their behaviour make me more liable to want to own one of their watches? No! Would the Border Agency be better employed in preventing the entry of illegal immigrants, class A drugs, and fake medicines? Yes! It may well be that I can’t see the trees for the forest here, but as far as I can tell, when a replica watch is destroyed, it doesn’t benefit the vendor, the buyer, or the UK economy. Companies like TM Eye make a lot of money from the luxury brands they represent, without actually raising the profile of the luxury brand. Perhaps the luxury brands would do better to save the money they pay to these reptiles, and discount their products instead? What do you say?

I've often wondered why thet don't use Turkey, as it's Eurasian.

So why did he buy a GT40? (Well sort of!)

I don't know about innovation, but amongst the cars I'd love to own are mid 60's Mustang, Corvette, Dodge Charger/Challenger, mid 50's Corvette, early 70's Trans Am......

This one today

It was the $85 big crown from Silix.

Just a couple of quick phone pics of my second stab at modding a watch. The first one of these I did for my son, this is my one.

Perhaps I should have gone back over your posts and looked at what you've been buying........