archibald

Eddie clearly states the picture is of a genuine. The bit about Eddie feeling superior to other dealers, etc. is 100% subjective--and, frankly, bizarre--speculation on your part. I'm not trying to kiss eddie's ass here--I just wonder if this merits a negative post in General Discussion. A quick read of the dealer review section reveals dealers who have kept people's money w/o sending them watches, dealerss who seem to have great difficulty answering emails, and other far more serious infractions of sound business practice. It seems to me that time spent busting eddie's chops about words he didn't even write could be spent posting a thread demanding we right more serious wrongs.

Not to mention the fact that Richemont has absolutely zero authority over the sale of 24mm wide pieces of leather unless they are stamped "Officine Panerai"

Only gen part i have seen is a clasp. Have you tried ofrei if they can order you OEM parts? If you do order some, keep in mind that, as far as I know, you would be the Niel Armstrong of PO frankens--I don't think anyone has built one yet.

My personal horological pet peeve--car watches. Airbrushed NASCAR t-shirts for hedge fund managers. "Oh, and look how the dial alludes to the XP 845v's instrument panel!" :yucky: And look how the crown alludes to the length of your penis... I like that watch, and especially the yellow dial, but unless they misspell Ferrari Y-U-G-O on the rep I ain't uying it.

I'm in DC, and like most washingtonians, jump at the chance to get to NYC whenever possible. So if you guys set something up, I'm on the bullet train.

First, thanks for your service. Second, money to burn or no, you guys can find any watch Krazy Paul offers at a similar price with nearly zero hassle. Read Paul's reviews on the old RWG, and I guarantee you'll come to understand why he is the most expensive dealer many people have ever done business with.

Subdial spacing is the very least of the day-date "chrono" wearer's worries. is right.

The short answer is: no can do, my brother. The subdial spacing, among other things is different. A more interesting question would be, "Has anyone managed to put a genuine lemania and an OEM speedy dial into a rep case? That may be possible but, sadly,unlikely to work IMO.

Frederick Jameson is a rep owner! What I always do is hand over my rep, and ask: "Pardner, I've been staring at our two watches for a few minutes now and granted, I'm kind of a dope, but I just cant see what makes one worth $500 and the other $5,000 except maybe I didn't pay for anyone's coporate jet rides or weekend villa in the Jura.

I guess i get what Journe is trying to do ever since I read the big piece in this year's Swiss Watchmaking Annual, but I just don't like the aesthetics on the Octas, as much as I want to. I'd be content so have one of the better rep factiories have a go at this, especially since they've started to move complications all around the dial (power reserve's @5:00, retrograde seconds all over hell, etc). Hell, as long as they get the seconds moved to the right place they could do a faux PR. I think this watch keeps the general Journe look, but is much cleaner, nice proportion of of the dial elements, a little PoMo/classic mixup, with just enough of the slight oddball aspect that makes you want to keep looking at it, which is, you know, baby, what the archibald aesthetic is all about.

thank god so few of these get sold...ever notice that most of the time when questionable watch auctions end with a winning bid no feedback--positive or negative--ever shows up? My personal theory is that some of these sellers get called out by so many people that they get cold feet and "win" the auctions themselves with dummy bids. Mullers are actually far worse than rolexes for scams--a very bad recipe: a newly "hot" watch + very high quality reps + lots of OEM dials, straps, and boxes available + very few people knowledgable enough to spot the reps. I notify ebay of at least 3 scams a day....and that is [censored] up. right now there's even a rep dial being sold as OEM.

I bet we'll see a moon phase rep this year--last year we saw the intoduction of genuine flying tourbillons, so I don't think it's an overly optimistic guess that we'll se a moon phase module or movement coming out of China before Christmas, or even better (but unlikely, sadly), a chrono module for the 2824, which will open up a whole world of working stopwatches.

I'd definitely be in on one of these, provided the AR is real and they use the foil bridge plates they use on the "improved" swiss and chinese movements instead of the crappy engraving/visible alignment pin version.

We all can live with flaws, especially the fixable ones. What would be nice is for a smart dealer/factory to understand Isokuru's points that there is a huge market of people willing to pay top dollar for something advertised as not only accurate--but of very high craftsmanship--as well. We've all seen the rep makers flashes of brilliance when fit and finish approaches gens. That's what I'm talking about. Let them get anything they want "wrong" as long as it's with a wink and a nod to the availability of aftermarket fixes. If they did that and spent part of the extra money they could get on overall quality (keeping part as profit, natch) I am 100% convinced that they could sell at least as many watches as Ideal--except unlike ideal they'd actually get repeat business.

"You can always try sinking your teeth into the bracelet in order to test its authenticity; if it molds to your teeth, it's probably real..." I suggest we all do this to PT's watches, you know, just to see if they're solid 14K. And, my favorite: "...fake watches usually have empty bracelet links." I almost want to forward that to Richemont's marketing department. Well, we know one thing: The world of replicas is safe from AskMen.com.

These are the best points in the thread and hopefully one of our more savvy dealers is running some numbers in the ol' noggin.

Because I am a sick, sick person in the last 14 months I have bought a genuine Master Hometime, a Tag Monaco, a DJR Chrono, and a TT DateJust for the missus. I have spent equal or more than that total amount in reps, OEM parts, and mods not to mention several Franklins over @ Eliot's place. The one thing I have not and would not do would be letting a Panerai AD swipe the ol' check card. The point of this is that the Paneristi can relax: Since, like kruzer00 I only buy watches worth more than 20% of their MSRP's, my rep purchases have not cost the Richemont group a dime in lost revenue. In fact, if some under-informed guy has seen one of my PAM reps and subsequently walked into an AD, I may have made them (and maybe even paneristi.com) a few bucks.

Anyone who wears that watch in public has my undying respect.

This is an old, old, argument which oddly enough remains the exactly same even as the quality of our reps improves in leaps and bounds. I remember when people used to [censored] about the bridges and crowns on PAMs, dials on subs, etc. People used to say, "I'd gladly pay a couple bills more for a better 11, or a sub and I'd really pay big bucks for a Daylight." Others would say, "Me too." still others would say, nope, not gonna happen. A rep is a rep is a rep is a rep." Well the proof is that pudding, eh? Some reps are 2-3X times better than when I bought my first versions a few years ago, and there are at least a dozen reps i can think of that have been offewred with all the gold parts in solid 18k. My suggestion: Expect reps of your favorite weatches to continue to improve in the months and years to come. And until then, remember: "A rep is a rep, and 99% of the people who see it on your whrist will believe 100% that it's real...as long as it's believable that you'd could and/or would be sporting a real one." That being said, I sure hope they hurry up making decent reps of some of my favs...

Please tell me one of them is going to be a Turn-O-Graph

First off, there is an easy fix for this, guys: order straps off dealers' websites using your real name and a valid credit card and I guarantee there will be no attempt to verify your watch's authenticity. I'm pretty bored w/ the whole paneristoid schtick except to say, imagine for a minute that it is slowly dawning on you that you have been victimized by a grade B+ marketing operation, duped into paying 5 grand for a $500 watch, a watch so basic in it's design and manufacture that it can be copied by Chinese ladies in surgeons' hats accurately enough that 99.9% of the people who see it won't be able to tell if its real or fake. Not to mention the fact that said duplication so easy enough that a 99% copy powered by the same base movement (which is also being copied to a high degree of accuracy, which is not a huge deal because it was designed in the decades follwing the Civil War) can be sold for a couple hundred bucks. Probably, given that set o' facts, we all would be a little shrill when the non-duped display their watches and--Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!--they look just like the one we raided the Ameritrade account for. Re: the "rep owners are all migrant farm workers" bit: The mark's last line of defense is money: "Hey, I can afford to be a chump!" It's no skin off of our asses to let them have their tiny little undesereved superiority complexes in the peace of cyberspace--Christ, it's not like we have to actually hang out to these people-- so why don't we just let them be? Edited to fix post-cocktail(s) speclling, grammar, and punctuation.

That's the first OEM Panerai I've ever seen w/ a thinner crown that it's rep. Is that a 40mm watch?

This is a Tortue w/ an asian manual wind movement. I have the yellow gold version; even though it gets almost no wrist time (I have too many gold dress watches) It's very accurate, VERY well made for the money--in fact, it has the nicest blued hands I've seen on a rep (most reps' blued hands are too light) I got mine for $88 from Adam.

Any further news, nanuq?

I wish they would just make the "frozen" stopwatches, like TTK described, at the factory--just use an asian auto, put the running seconds in the right place, and lock up everything else. Of course we'd all love accurate reps of our favorite chronos, complete with 1:1 FP 1185 copy movements, but until that happens the frozen stopwatch models seem a far, far, far better option than either quartz (the ticking of which even for non-experts is the #1 rep tip off) or the boneheaded day-day "chronos" my replica pet peeve.