archibald

Rolli's lug mods are a must, not only for the convenience but also for accuracy. Thanks for the pic of the gen. Beautiful. I may have to start looking for a F'n Cortebert now....

For what it's worth, my watchsmith was pretty impressed by the fit and finish of the Seagull, but unimpressed by the design. Very difficult to service and reassemble because of the some quirky design features, says he.

You mean the "watchmen cyclopses," watchman. IMO, tor the 063 and 029, the watchmen are the best, for all subs and later model PAMs the HauteHippie is the only way to go, and the 27/28 need sssurfer cyclopses to be 1:1.

Jos says the case is "Polish." Shouldn't is be Latvian or at least brushed? W/ an OEM crown,a nice blue croc strap, high quality single sided AR, and a lume this ought to be one of the better PAM reps for under $500 all in--a pretty good rep/gen ratio since the gen would cost probably 12 grand if you get someone to sell theirs. The dial looks a little too blue (more the color of the 168 than the 082, ) but that could very well be the pics. Caseback looks pretty good. Here's the gen:

If you can wait a few weeks for my 63 to be finished up, I may be selling my 29. The movement is an undecorated ETA 2893-2 rather than the decorated version (which will be swapped into the 63) and the caseback is 100/500 but it will have a The Zigmeister lume on dial and hands, an OEM crown and custom tube, an excellent modified CG, and as per the gen, no AR.

Yup, and out of the box among the top 2 or 3 most accurate PAM reps ever produced--random caseback #'s, correct date font, good mag, perfect springloaded crown, excellent fit and finish. A shame they're overlooked because of 4 measly mm.

Great!! The soldered lugs are amazing... BTW, anyone have a pic of the "Rolex crown" dial gen? Come to think of it, I've never seen the gen of that watch. Any idea how rare the gen is, besides "very"? Beautiful piece!!

Spreading a little misisfo of his own, not wanting to admit how good the reps are 'natch: "I have seen the site and all the pictures from Hublot, IWC, Panerai,Roger Dubuis, Breitling, AP and so on seem to be pictures from real watches. Then,once you have ordered from an original picture they sell you a fake where you can see the difference (which from the pictures you cannot see as they are official pictures) Anyway one should only buy (whatever watch) from an AD (especially today)" What he meant to say is this: "If you buy a watch that uses fairly standard materials, manufacturing processes, and stock ETA movements and which is backed by a huge marketing campaign, you can bet the chinese will exploit the weakness in that business model (Manufacturing an ordinary watch and branding your way a high MSRP) and someday soon you will see an Internet picture of a replica of your watch. . So, if you're going to spend 8 or 10 grand on a watch, it's much smarter to buy a watch w/ a complicated manufacture movement and high quality hand-executed fit and finish, which the chinese cannot duplicate. So buy a JLC or a Chopard LUC, etc. and never, ever buy one of my watches, unless it's a rep!!!"

This is exactly right. The DC area AD ordered 2 custom versions, one of which was nice--what looked like a lightish gray dial (maybe from the magnesium or palladium version)w/ black hands in an all black case and the red/black dial w/ a brushed gray (Ti? Ta?) case and a ceramic bezel.

One for the overseas, one for the breitling, por favor.

Sadly, not verified. My impression (I think we all have the same source for the new models info, BTW...LOL!!) is that they would like to do it but don't really feel like paying 10k for a gen. It's my dream watch as well, so lets send some prayers, positive vibes, luckenergy or whatever we personally send for in these situations over to China.

I was wondering about the problem w/ the 6 and the 9 so I showed Enzo's artwrok to a friend who does CNC for a living (no worries guys, if he would do rep projects I'd already have all possible upgrades for sale) His guess is that if davidsen's is using CNC shop for this project they don't have the proper tooling to do the tight corners, which he said would require a mid-project tool swap on most lower end CNC engraving machines. Seems like we'd be better off donating a CNC machine tool, than artwork. Which actually I would be happy to do.

I'd be willing to pay a fair price for a 1:1 SOPROD quality finished movement, but not much more than $200 for unfinished, which is probably less than they cost Tourby.

My bad...I thought you were gunning for a Ultimate Ultimate version. I was just poking fun anyway. I hear you on only wearing watches you can afford gens of. I try to do the same thing, more or less. I just don't see the point buying reps that cost 30-40% of used gens by the time you mod them close to 1:1 (breits, lower-end Rolexes, etc) when there are just-as-easily reppable watches that can be bought and modded for 15%-20% the cost of a gen.

LOL! An expensive rep of a $3500 Rolex may be your ultimate, BT, but lot's of us are going to skip right over that one, and get the others!! Boy, if all they do in 2008 is rep the reverso well and actually get the Big Pilot out 2008 will be a good year, but an auto black seal, P2002 powered anything, and maybe the new fifty fathoms (word I hear is that it's on some kind of "list" whatever that means) it will be the best era for reps since the golden three months of 2005 when the 27,28, 63, 29, 50, 51, 186, 188, etc came out.

I'ver also heard from another member that the CG's on the both of the latest "ultimate" GMT's he ordered are crap, so it looks like you guys are beating your heads against the wall ordering the same bad guards over and over. I thought the guard on the previous version of the Arktos was pretty good, so you guys might want to ask your collectors if they can send guards from the that version. I see know reason why any other decent submersible CG won't work, so it might be worth while to check the trading section.

What is Superior Lume? Is it superior to Super Luminova or inferior to Super Luminova but superior to what is on the stock reps? BTW, I still wonder what the gen 2052 handwind PAMs would be worth if someone tried to sell one--there's no destro PAM numbered 2052 to be sure, but I actually do feel sorry for the unlucky guys who plunked down hard earned dough for #2052 111E and H's.

I'm thinking probably no swans neck--OP probably adds it. Don't know which regulator comes on it. Tourby, I'd be interested in one or two of these. I wonder if the sunburst is put on the winding gears are @ ETA factory or at OP. The horrible sunburst on the rep movements is the easist 1 second tell for me. For those asking why you might want one: It's the only swiss movement available that beats at the same rate as gen panerai. I'm thinking that that fact alone is not worth what we'll likely have to pay, but would be worth considering if they come w/ the decorated winding gears, blued screws, etc, making their transformation to a PAM movement simply a matter of swapping out the bridges or applying the engraved foil for solid back watches.

I usually exclude gens that are as well repped as the UPO since 99.99% of the people who I run into wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a modded UPO and gen, but if you really believe a gen is 3X better than a modded rep, definitely take YM's advice and buy used.

Curious--what part of the 040 can't be done by anyone other than mark? But to answer your question, now that Mark has signed on as Paneristi.com's replica consultant, I doubt he's making any fake Panerais these days. On second thought, maybe he is. Why not drop him a line?

chieftang, for your future searching, the easiest way to tell a jimmy case IMO is to look between the lugs, there will be a much less visible cutout or indent or whatever you want to call it between the lugs than on most other cases. To be positive, though, I've never seen another case w/ the same lug shape as jimmy's: slightly longer and thinner than most rep cases.

For a swap, you'd have to cut the 21j's dial feet off, but that's the least of your worries. Unless they really did a number on the 21j's date position w/ some sort of overlay, I doubt the dates will match up. You'll almost certainly have to make an overlay for the 7750 to get the date into the right position on the 21j dial, and even that may not be possible. Depending on which Chinese movement they used, there could be a 2mm difference between the position of the dates w/ respect to an A7750. There are2 ways to find out--one is to spend money on an asian rep and just try it, selling the asian if it doesn't work. The other requires some photo editing skills. You would find a dead straight on pic of both versions, open each of them in a photo editing program. resize each picture so the watches are the same size, and then measure the distance between the center of the cannon pin and the center of the date window. If the measurements are the same, you're good to go. BTW, to clear up any further confusion on the 2007 model: just checked Chopards site--there definitely is a black dial version.

Everybody who wants a watch slightly nicer than a seiko buys a TAG. Everybody who wants a watch slightly nicer than a TAG buys an Omega. So get the PO.

No gen black dial version? Well, that makes the new ultimate rep of this watch a complete non-starter, w/ the bad dial color and wron rehuat... Damn, I was looking forward to this as my first purchase of '08.