archibald

Marco, you've missed your true calling: The Italian Mark Twain!!! Parody at it's best...

I just bought the new sprint PPC-6700 (awsome, BTW, essentially your office desktop in your pocket) and was wondering if there are any cool watch desktops like there are for the big computers. The best one i've found, SPB Time, has an analog watch interface, but is a far cry from the working brequet perpetual calandar I have at home.

TT and gold reps rarely get praise, at least from us anals around here, because they are rarely well made. High end gold watches are usually 18k and there is no theoretical or practical reason why 18k plated parts cannot be indistinguishable from solid 18k parts to the eye since plating has been perfected for centuries. The problem is that rep makers rarely invest the effort needed to "do it right" into their watches. Some do, and those watches are outstanding. But most don't.

All that work, and the dial looks like [censored]...but, hey, I admire the guy for trying! Probably, most rep dials are printed digitally using laser engraving and dye sub printing and then are lumed using stencils.

Wow, how about some rep factories increase the size of the date before they put that double barrel movement in an accurate lange or journe? Also, re the the 2892: i remember The Zigmeister posting an easy way to tell whether the 2892 in your watch is chinese or swiss. Do these guys make the Asia 7750? I bet they don't....

What's interesting--if the blue text is the wholesale price--is how badly Richemont is screwing Japanese retailers--not a lot of margin, which translates to not a lot of discounts for consumers, which translates to Richemont becomes the primary benificiary of the Panerai craze. They way business usually and ought to work, I guess, but the tradeoff is the fact that Japan is also the primary market for high end Panerai reps.

All I know is some medical entity should do a study on the calcium intake of Paneristi--is it just me, or do posters on Paneristi.com tend to have wrists much thinner than most grown men? Now that I think about it, maybe that's a better job for that psychologist that keeps threatening to do a study on Panerai owners...

Fantastic idea, Gran! Look no farther than your rep collection. Somehwere in my house there is an old quartz overseas I bought from klink back in the day. If it has an applied cross that's better than jos's new version, I'm in.

Posting reps on gen forums is so horrifying on so many levels it boggles the mind. That being said, it's important to out these people for two reasons. 1) To protect us as a group for the reasons already posted and 2) to protect individuals here. I've spent enough time (lurking) on gen forums to not be the least bit surprised if it turned out that some anti-rep zealot from over there has registered an RWG handle on a gen forum, posted some RWG pics, and started causing trouble. there would be ways to investigate and verify this, right? I vote for outing these people and giving them the chance to confirm or deny. If they confirm, warn them and let bygones be bygones. If they deny--find out if they are telling the truth. If they are not, ban them. if they are the victim of a provocateur...well we have vays of dealink with provocateurs....

Hi Marco, Yeah, the caseback numbers on PT's rep are wrong, like most of the reps, which doesn't bother me at all --what I like about his back is the H serial number box and the logo, which is about all I care about--just enough to indicate it's an H series logo watch. I was hoping someone had a version with all around better engraving--this version just looks a little rough to me. Eddie's H series watches have excellent quality engraving casebacks, but no logo version as far as I know.

Your movement does look better than the IWC movement, which is pretty ugly if you ask me...but i think you'd sell more more, at least around here, if you used your skills to try to get the 6498 looking as close as possible to the IWC movement. What is beautiful to a rep collector is similarity, not "prettier but different." For the Jones, I'd cut the bridges as close as possible, do the engraving, paint the sockets, etc. Probably not cost effective to put dummy screws in the winding gears and make some dummy regulator to simulate the IWC, but I predict movements with "correctly" shaped and engraved bridges and engraving would sell out in fifteen minutes if priced right.

It's good business--they see that lots of people are having their watches modded, so they're selling pre modded watches. I think the real benefit will come to them when they start offering more of the popular mods alreadypre- done--milled guards on subs, upgraded parts, real AR coat, corrected datewheels, etc. But I predict some real money can be made by the dealer who offers the mods and watches that nobody else has--correct H series guards, an automatic PAM offered in Ti (all they'd have to do is have a solid Ti back made and then throw an auto movement and dial into a 36 case), etc. Jos and Andrew seem to be making a run to become the Bill Gateses of the rep world--serious collectors like us will benefit from the race.

The only thing i can think of is a potential waste of about five hours, but if anyone's ever been fooled, like me, by the printed-on-clear-plastic "engraving" on a movement this has a chance of working: 1) find a good high res pic of the movement 2) import into photoshop and resize to actual size of the 6498. 3) remove everything but the engraving and printing on the bridges 4)print onto clear adhesive vellum 5)stick onto rep bridges 6)have one of our mod artistes mill around the "printed" dial to duplicate the shape of the OEM bridges. In the unlikely event that works, the super-anal could paint the jewel-sockets goldand even drill the winding gears and insert dummy screw heads w/ shaved off stems.

You're just going through "must...buy....everything" phase. In a while you'll be passing up watches because the crown in .24 mm too thick just like the rest of us.

It depends. I do feel sorry for the unlucky SOB who has #2052 PAM 111F. And i don't really mind the #117 inside joke which tells buyers of gens, if they're smart, to look extra close when they're offered a watch w/ that serial number while nobody you show your watch to will "get it" unless they collect reps or high end gens too. I think it's not too cool when rep makers do 001, or 888, or 0123, or 666, or the other dumb [censored] they do--they can make it obvious without making it dopey, IMO. But to make a long story short, I wish the makers would agree on a couple "rep" serial numbers--the only person who could call you out is a fellow collector, and the rep-as-real-selling assholes would have to find their own backs.

80 bucks for solid 18k sounds not too bad to me--a decent plate job will probably cost you 25-30 bucks plus the cost of the buckle. http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:Q65IGX...us&ct=clnk&cd=2

Thinking about putting together a 005H, out of my old 005A now that the L-Swiss-L dial is "correct" and have a couple Q's for the PAM WISes: 1)Is the rep back below the best available (Pic #1)? If so can the ink be removed to more closely match the OEM pic #2 2)Unless I'm missing a new version, the rep H series guards all look a little thin to me. Anyone have an opinion about which one is best? Thanks as always.

Does anyone know offhand if the OEM 40mm Panerais (specifically the 51) have AR coating?

I've seen posts saying it's both 40mm w/o crown and 42mm w/o crown, but no final word from Andrew. I haven't heard back from Ofrei yet about hands and inserts (which is why I want to know the size so badly). I'll post as soon as I hear from them. King says hers is 42.5 w/o crown, BTW. Jos's is 40mm w/o crown. Also, has anyone tried to fit an OEM crown and/or He on their rep PO yet?

I doubt you'll find too many strippers versed in the Sven Annderson's pieces. Probably the girls would be more impressed by a all gold rollie--then they'd really hustle you.

Excellent work, guys. The crystal (along with the dial) is the main thing holding me back from the 212. I'm definitely in so when they fix the dial, I'll have the crystal. Finepics, david's hands look like an improvement over the current hands to me--less lumed area--do you agree?

A while back, I bought a a bracelet for my 51 from these guys--the deal went fine, although I paid a little too much for the same bracelt eddie or river probably couls have gotten me. I was in a hurry though and they agreed to fed ex for only a couple bucks more. If david wants to compete with these guys on ebay, i'm sure he could drive their prices down in 10 minutes.

Ms. A and I cart around 5 kids in an Excusrion--even w/ me taking the metro whenever possible, @ 3 bucks that's a genuine Pannie's worth of gas every 10 months. Remember guys, stop buying reps 'casue like the Justice Department says, fake watches fund terror. And we all know that not one cent of the billions we literally pump into the economy of our pals over in Saudi has ever bought a tenth of a gram of plastique strapped to a suicide bomber's torso.

I sure do--and, God, I'd kill for a slice of Little Joe's right now....

You will never get called out (unless you happen to randomly run into a true WIS who spends some quality time looking at your wrist) if you: Wear only the best reps available and do all the mods you can afford and/or have time to do. If you wear a bad rep, a fantasy or day-date chrono etc, you probably still won't get called out very often, but if you do it's your own fault. Never wear a rep of a genuine watch you would never plausibly wear. If you do cold calls down at the Merrill Lynch storefront next to the RiteAid, don't expect anyone at the TGI Friday's to believe the Sky-Moon you wore on Wednesday and today's platinum Yacht-Master are both real. Never wear a rep into an AD. The "I fooled an AD" posts you see around here are self-delusional. No AD is going to call you out unless they are ninnies and/or fools. But they also spotted your rep in 15 seconds. If anyone does call you out, remember you are innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. If anyone ever calls me out they better have their [censored] together and be able to point out the specific flaws or else they are going to get embarrassed.