rionrlty

The only person who is going to recognize, even a cheap rep, are guys like us who bother to know the difference. How many, maybe 150,000 between all the forums. That is a very small number in reference to world population of 7.1 billion. Of that number, maybe 10% are good enough to pick out a super rep, or even a reasonably good one. Even many watch repair guys (who aren't ADs) are slow to recognize them without a loupe and close examination. You could show the average guy, say a rep TAG caliber 16 (with its known flaws) right next to a gen and he probably wouldn't be able to pick out the difference and even if he could, he wouldn't be able to tell which one was real and which fake. I'm a Breitling guy and have had many gen Navitimers, Chronomats, and Super Oceans over the years as well as others. I can look at my early, low beat, Fighters rep and it looks just like a Navitimer to me, its credible. Sure, when someone like Andrew picks it apart I can see the differences, date font, misaligned slide rule hash marks, brightness of dial print or even the sunken date wheel on the standard Navi, but it still looks close enough to my gen Navis that even I have trouble seeing a worthwhile difference. Also, does anyone actually take into account how many variations of dial decoration and printing, subdial size and style, case shape and size, bezel knurl size and style, case back detail and date font that there have actually been on Navitimers since they were first introduced in 1952 and also how many times perhaps a different part would have been used, out of sequence, simply because stock ran low on the correct item. Mind you, I value the guys who pick them apart and obsess with the differences. How else are we going to know how good they can get? It's fun, But guys, understand that we are the only ones who really give a damn. The average guy doesn't even know what kind it is unless it's a Rolex.

In the late seventies Albert Wajs and Joseph Olech purchased the Navitimer tooling and parts out of receivership, but not the intellectual property rights to the name. There trademark was and still is to this day O&W and they still make the watch today. They can even furnish original NOS parts for the seventies vintage Navitimers. For a while they actually labeled the watches as Navitimer (I had one) but sometime during the late 80s or early 90s were made to stop and renamed the watches "Aviator". They sell only over the internet, thru marketer Chronotime and the watches are and always have been around 1/3 the price of the Breitling Navitimer. They have recently started making more styles of O&W watches. They are all genuine 100% Swiss made and have a very good reputation for reliability and workmanship, especially with the Military. The link below will take you to their site. http://www.chronotime.ch/6101.html

I was disappointed to see in the IWC list that the new 45mm Spitfire Doppel Chronograph 371806 was not included. In my opinion the only "tell" on this watch is the fact that there is no second chronograph function, even though it displays both large second hands and has the third pusher. Am I wrong on this? If so I would appreciate a critique from one of the experts.

Andreww, there is no gap. What your seeing is an illusion caused by shadows that I couldn't seem to eliminate in my pictures. If you look carefully at all the pictures you will see what I mean. There is a very slight edge thickness to the metal ring (1/10 mm?) underlying the plastic slide rule overlay, plus the thickness of the plastic overlay itself and that may be casting the shadow, but no matter how I positioned my lights I could not seem to eliminate it. Here is another picture that may illustrate my point better.

There is a SS Navitimer 6/9/12 black with white subdials on Ebay for $3,000. Weird thing is it has a two tone bracelet. Anyone interested in the head only for $2500?

That's actually a pretty good idea MOAB. The Trouble is that I haven't found a dealer yet that will sell the TT one separate. That's the problem with TT, the gold always wears thru eventually. On bezels and cases there are platers who will lay it on thick for a little extra cost. I can't even imagine how much work it would be to take one of those bracelets apart and replate the center links.

I actually bought one for a 38mm chronomat a few years back for $300 on Ebay. Still, I imagine the Navitimer bracelet would be quite a bit more. The thing is that the don't wrap these like the Rolex so that's the only way to get long term use from one.

Hey guys, thanks for the critique. I've listened to you and it's back to the drawing board to fix the dial problem. Wish me luck. Does anyone have a gen date wheel to sell?

Hi Guys, Thanks to your suggestions I have now corrected the problem with the improper dial depth in relation to the slide rule ring. The dial is now just a hair short of actually touching the slide rule ring. Any closer and it could damage the dial. The first 3 pictures are after correction and the rest are before pictures. Let me know what you think. Now if I could just find that gen date wheel. ................................................................................................................................................................................. Hi Guys, here are the results of my latest Franken project. It has a gen dial, stem, crown and a gen Swiss ETA 7750 engine and the rest of the watch is rep. I also have a standard rep Navitimer Fighters SS watch with a rep blue dial and it is amazing the difference in color between the rep dial and the gen dial. The rep dial is darker and a lot more subtle. The gen dial just pops, especially in the TT version with gold printing. This watch is made up of parts from 5 different watches with an eye toward picking the best from each one. The case is from an older rep and has the larger bevel on the top outer edges of the lugs, which is far more Gen like. The gold bezel and TT bracelet actually came from a very old quartz rep and the clasp. The bezel construction was the same on the quartz watch but the keeper ring had to be cut down to make room for the thickness of the crystal. The Bracelet is from the quartz watch also but the clasp and back cover are from a recent rep with deeper, more correct engraving. When I first discovered the concept of "Frankens", after joining this forum, I kind of thought it was silly. Now I think I have gotten the bug as this is my second Navitimer franken. The first was an SS Fighters model with a gen Breitling B13 movement, gen stem and crown and gen 18mm deployant which I presented earlier in this section. While I have always liked my Navis more on a strap, I believe the TT one actually belongs on the TT bracelet. Eventually I would like to source a gen TT bracelet for this one. This has now officially become one of my favorite reps, along side of that one.

This is my Rolex GMT II model 116713. It is the more expensive rep with the wrapped center links and solid end links. It came with what was described as a green anniversary bezel insert. The finish was painted on. I’m not sure if that was correct for this F serial number watch but I have other early subs and GMTs, both gen and rep, with the painted bezels and they always seem to get scratched in daily use, as did this green painted bezel. I own the gen version of this watch also (black painted bezel). I purchased the rep with idea of using it instead of subjecting the gen to wear. Not being particularly schooled on the history of the GMT, I wondered if the later ceramic, recessed number, bezel would fit on my watch. Since that watch is slightly larger in diameter than mine I suspected it would not fit. I found one of the rep ceramic bezels in black/gold on one of the forums. It had a flaw or two and was fairly inexpensive because of that. Now I had something to experiment with. When I received it, sure enough, it proved to be about 1mm larger diameter than the metal one, around the outer edge. The inner edge seemed to fit fine. I determined to try and shave it down to fit my bezel. Let me tell you, that ceramic stuff is hard! I rigged up a crude lathe and proceeded toshave it down with my dremel using cylindrical stone grinding bits. It took about an hour and I wore out two of the bits, but finally I managed to shave enough off of the outer edge to get a proper fit. Surprisingly it did not chip or even scar the outer edge of the bezel. Once I got the outer diameter right, the inner diameter proved to be a little snug. When I tried the same technique to shave it down just a smidge, the ceramic ended up chipping a little. It’s not bad and hard to see with the naked eye, but with these macro (magnified 3x) pictures it shows up quite clearly. The ceramic bezel insert is slightly thicker than the metal one. Because of this the inner edge sits almost even with the upper surface of the crystal. I think I remember noticing that the Sub C, with ceramic insert, is the same way. The old metal bezel left the edge of the crystal protruding above it slightly. Over all, I’m quite happy with the final result. Although seasoned Rolex enthusiasts might cringe at the modification, I think it makes the watch look much better and it is much more practical to use. I also like the black bezel much better than the green one. Finally, here's how the watch looks under normal magnification.

Breitling SuperOcean, 42mm model introduced sometime between 2000 and 2003. The subject of this post is a Breitling SuperOcean watch that I purchased sometime after the year 2000. I’m quite certain that it was over 10 years ago now. I have Breitling catalogues for years 1994, 1999, and 2003. The SuperOcean was not offered in 1994 but its beginnings can be seen in the quartz Shark of that year that was good for 300m in depth. Please note that all photographs are of my rep SuperOcean. The artist renditions are copied from the Breitling catalogue. In my 1999 catalogue there are two SuperOceans listed, the standard one good for 1,000m in depth, and the Professional, which was rated at 5,000m. Both of these were equipped with helium release valves located on the side of the case at 10 o’clock. By 2003 the Professional seems to have been dropped and the standard SuperOcean was now rated at 5,000m and included a release valve. Official dimensions were stated as 41.5mm in diameter, and 14.90mm thickness. All could be equipped with the Professional bracelet as pictured on this example. I should mention here that there were significant changes made in the model from 1999 to2003 as can be seen in the pictures above from the catalogues. In the early 2000s there were not many accurate reps once you got out of the Rolex brand. When I purchase this watch I already owned two blue dialed gen. SuperOceans and was curious how this one would stack up against them. In the pictures it looked great. One of the two SOs that I owned was probably from the era prior to 1999. The other was a later watch made sometime between 1999 and 2003. The most obvious differences between these to gens was that the earlier model had a much more rounded lug shape with no sharp lines. It also had only 3 lines of script below the center of the dial. SuperOcean, Automatic, and the depth rating. In addition the back cover was not the decahedron shape that required a special tool to open it. I believe it had small holes for a case opening tool instead, but it could have been slots. The Other gen had much more angular lugs, similar to the subject rep. The script under the center now had 4 lines and read: SuperOcean, Chronometre, Automatic and a 4th line contained the depth rating. The subject of this post was extremely close to the later model gen. I’ve only been able to spot a few flaws, which would probably be considered extreme compared to today’s super reps, but at the time purchased it was not easy to tell the rep from the gen laying side by side on the desk. A list of the flaws that I’ve spotted are as follows: -Lume panels in the hands are slightly different dimensions than on the gen. It’s a very small discrepancy and hard to spot. -Color of the dial was very slightly different that the gen. At the time I thought the gen might have faded slightly with use, because the earlier watch matched pretty closely. -Although the crown is of the same size, the knurls were slightly finer than the gen. Also the ‘B’ symbol was smaller on the rep. -Unlike most Breitling reps of the era the engraving on the back cover was very deep and looked almost identical to the gen., but the serial number is missing. -The bracelet was a near duplicate, it has smaller screws than current models holding the adjustment links, but was a close match to the gen., which also had smaller screws (the earlier model bracelet was assembled with push pins). Also, while the markings on the clasp were engraved instead of laser etched like most Breitling reps at the time, they were not as deep as the gen. Also the stamping on the clasp hinge, while as deep as the gen., lacked the Breitling stamping on the narrow part of the Hinge. -While the Lume is adequate, it is not great on the rep. However it was slightly better than the gen. -Also, I don’t know if it has AR at all, but I could tell no difference between the rep and the gen in this respect. -Although I have never opened the watch I’m sure that it has a Chinese 17j or 21j, but it keeps excellent time and has never missed a beat. It has been one of my favorite Breitling reps and I have worn it quite a lot Sadly the gens have both gone on to new other homes long ago, so no comparison can be shone now. I am including scans of the pictures from the Breitling Catalogues to compare to. Please feel free to comment or point out features that I’ve missed. Also I’d like to solicit opinions on value of the watch should I decide to sell it. Thanks all

fraggle42, I don't know what you just said, but thanks for saying it. The first main frame computer went into operation at McDonnell Aircraft corporation (later to become McDonnell/Douglas Corp) at St. Louis Missouri, USA in around 1965. The next biggest one was installed in Brown Shoe Corp., Where I worked, same city, around 1967. It took up almost 40,000 glass enclosed square feet of the basement of there world head quarters building and was about 50 feet from my office. There were countless large tape driven processors, interconnected, on a raised subfloor with it's own dedicated air conditioning system beneath the floor to keep all the solid state circuitry cool.. Everyone who worked inside had to wear a coat, even in the summer. I'm told that the whole massive project was not equal to the processing power of a cheap laptop today. I'm proud to say that I thought the whole idea was a boondoggle and patently silly. I resisted any such influence or knowledge of same until around 1985 when I had to learn how to use a, still crude by current standards, but much smaller, computer in my job. I've successfully stayed about 10 years behind the curve ever since. My 15 year old grandson is a wiz at it and speaks a language that I don't understand most of the time. Your post reminded me of that. I didn't understand much of what you said once we got past "Toggle", but thanks for trying. I'm a Real Estate Broker by profession. I retired in 2008 and kicked back for 3 years. I didn't like retirement so I returned in 2011. During that time the whole industry switched from paper documents to doing everything on the internet. It felt like I'd missed 20 years instead of just 3, so I've been playing catch-up ever since. Thanks again

Thanks Fraggle42, that did the trick. I just learned something new. Appreciate it. I sometimes suffer from paranoia and for a while though admin. had slapped my hands for disobeying the rules

I have a number of listings right now that I would like to lower prices on. Would it be preferred that I simply repost them with new price, or should I edit the old one?

Has anyone noticed that the options tool bar has been blanked out on posting? I too always crossed through the old text just to be totally accurate, but for now my tool bar is not working, so cannot cross out items. Is this happening to everyone or is it just me? Also, can an admin. comment on the reason why changes are forbidden? I'd really like to know.

You know, I never was one to accept rules at face value if they made no sense. Why not be able to change the listing? I personally have made mistakes in both pricing and description that I needed to correct after posting. None of us are perfect. Sometimes a price should be reduced after the fact, so what is the reason for that rule. It seems not to make sense and also seems to be pretty much disregarded by most on the sale forums. Anyone got the answers? Also, if the rule is valid, then why give us a way to edit in the first place? Also, I still think it's a pain in the a-s to have to go to the end of the string to find out if an item is still available.

Great! Now there are two ways to do it. Either left-click on full Editor, or right-click on regular Edit and then left-click open. Thanks for the additional info.

Both location of the item and currency are minor annoyances, but I generally don't worry about those things until after I've developed a positive interest in the purchase. After a while currency conversion became familiar enough that I could approximate it my head. A single currency would be nice but after all we are an international community and should adapt to the fact. Still paramount however, is the (Sold) notification as currency and location would only be relevant after passing that portal. Some inconsiderate sellers will still refuse to make the notification, but if we could get 80% of the members to comply, instead of the 20% that I've estimated so far, it would make a big difference. Also I've learned that before seriously considering a purchase, to check the seller's profile and, more importantly, feedback which automatically informs of location. I've already had responses from a number of members thanking me for instructions on how to modify the heading so I think education is the key to this. The real question seems to be, what is the best way to get out the word?

Perhaps it should be put in the sales rules, but of course not everyone obeys all the rules now. Education is the key. I think there are a lot of people who just don't know how to do it.

Who would want to???

Hey guys, I’m not usually one to stick my nose in where it may not be appreciated, but… I’ve only been on the forum now for most of a year. I started out right away selling some of my almost 250 reps, which I’ve been collecting for over 10 years and then buying others to replace them. Right off I noticed that when a watch, parts or straps sold on the forum that some of the listings displayed a (Sold) notification in the heading. Many more did not and many would only give indication on the last reply that they had indeed been sold. I nearly always search the recent listings at least twice a day and right away became irritated that I would have to waste time searching the entire string to find out if the item had already been sold. I resolved to be more informative on my own listings but ran up against a roadblock. When I left clicked on the “edit” prompt, it gave no option for changing anything in the ad heading. So, I contented myself with placing (Sold) at the very beginning of the description. Not completely content with this situation I finally managed to contact an admin., who informed me that by right clicking on the “edit” prompt and then clicking on “open” that I would be able to access the whole ad, including the heading, so that I could place (Sold) right at the beginning of the heading. Right now I would estimate that less than 20% of the ads are marked in this way. It’s really not much effort and I, for one, would appreciate this courtesy from other forum members. It was not obvious to me, so perhaps many simply do not know how how to do this as I did not in the beginning. Perhaps it should even become a rule of listing and selling INHO. Anyone else think this is a good idea?

Two months ago now and still no watch. Seller has not been on the forum Sept. 30th. I just read of another similar situation with a seller Breitlingguy. Suspiciously similar M.O. Could we have one guy here who is registering under different names and scamming folks? If anyone else has had a similar experience with this guy please contact me. On September 3rd, I purchased a broken Breitling Navitimer Datora from member reggieboomboom32, who is located in the UK. We had good communication it seemed. I am in the U.S. and I ask him to send the watch directly to rolexman in the Netherlands for repair. When I received no tracking number for about a week I inquired and was give the excuse that he was moving and had not shipped it yet. He promised to ship it the next day and forward a tracking number. Then, I went on vacation. When I got back there was still no tracking number and rolexman had not received my watch. It has now been 2 months. I have written several PMs to reggieboomboom32 and also written to the email address on his Paypal account. The reason I’m writing this is to find out if any other members know him or can get in touch with him in some other way. Perhaps something terrible has happened and he cannot communicate. It is too late now to start a Paypal dispute and I have delayed leaving bad feedback in hopes that he will respond. As he has good feedback I am reluctant to think the worst Please, if anyone can help with this please PM me and let me know.

Thanks for the info Pete. That makes more sense. They should have done this with the Navitimers too.

Hi folks. I am relatively new on the RWG forum but have been collecting reps, especially Breitlings, for nearly 20 years. This included one of the earliest low beat A7750 Navitimer Fighters, which has now been frankened into a more accurate Fighters with gen parts and a gen Breitling B13 movement by Rolexman. I am also in process with a second TT Navitimer with a gen ETA7750 and gen blue dial. I recently traded one of my Navitimers for a Bentley GT, thanks to fellow member db1. I have what may be a silly question for some of you more knowledgeable Breitling guys. Right from the beginning all of the Bentleys have had a small spring loaded button on the left side of the case that bears resemblance to a nitrogen relief valve. As it seems counter intuitive to have this on a Chronograph, which doesn't even have screw down pushers I would like to know the purpose if any for this small button. Thanks in advance for the help.

WTB Montbrilliant Datora. Prefer white face but will consider others. I'm also willing to trade.