teddy boy

I bought a black Seamaster Professional at the local AD, it has the "James Bond" bracelet. I also considered a Breitling Superocean with a blue face. First of all, the ADs are definitely responding to competition from the interent. Both watches were offered at prices around 15% below the msrp, placing the Superocean within about $300(after tax) of the best price I saw on the internet. The seamaster professional was actually cheaper than the best price I saw on the internet, but I think the AD incorrectly priced the automatic seamaster at the quartz price and then gave me the standard discount off that price. I don't consider it my responsility to correct their pricing mistakes. The after sales tax price for each watch was $2206 for the super ocean and $1575 for the seamaster. Once you get within a few hundred dollars, I'd prefer buying in person over the internet for all of the usual reasons (i.e. no chance of getting ripped off, support the local retailer, actually get to handle the watch you're going to buy etc). So why did I buy the seamaster? Well, here are the reasons. 1. I liked both watches a lot and had no clear preference for the appearance of one over the other. Given that fact, there was a difference of $632 in price and I had no clear preference , it made sense to go with the cheaper one. Last time I checked, $632 is still $632. 2. The seamaster uses the 2892-A movement as its base platform, the super ocean is built from the 2824. I realize that both companies modify the base movement a great deal, but my impression is that the 2892 is a slightly better movement. Maybe I'm wrong on that point, but I do have that impression. 3. I liked the bracelet better on the seamster. It had a smoother mechanism and higher overall quality feel. The divers extension on the super ocean wasn't crisp and felt rather clunky. Frankly, it was disappointing on a watch of this price. Mind you, it looked great, it just didn't function as well as I would expect on an expensive watch. The bracelet on the seamaster works flawlessly. Impressions of the watch. The watch has a great feel. In the store I couldn't sense the differences between the gens and a rep. When I got the watch home and held it next to my reps, there are subtle differences in fit and finish. I'm sure I would have had a similar impression of the super ocean had I bought it instead. However, holding a gen next to a rep (even though the rep is not of the same watch), you can tell just how high the quality of the reps is today. The one area where the reps that I own don't come close, however, is the luminova. The genuine seamaster really lights up. The AR of the gen is also quite a bit better and the feel of the bracelet is better as well. Some of you have maintained that reps may actually induce people to buy a gen. I think I'm living proof of that fact. I don't think I would have ever purchased a gen if I hadn't become interested in this quality watch through the rep market. I'm terrible with a camera but my wife has promised to help me photograph the watch. I'll try to get some photos up over the next few days so those of you who own seamaster reps can compare to the gen. Thanks again to this board for the information and to all of you who responded to questions in my posts.

Thanks to everyone for the respones. I'm at a bit of a conundrum as to what to do. I went to the Omega AD today and tried on the Seamaster 300 and the Planet Ocean. Both were nice watches, the AD had an excellent price on the Seamaster 300. It was $1475, actually less than what the websites are asking. The Planet Ocean is clearly a better looking watch with a better movement, but it's not twice the watch. The conundrum is that neither watch looks appreciably better than my good reps. I have an Ingenieur that is every bit the overall quality of either one of the two Omegas. The real conundrum is that I could purchase reps of all the watches I'm interested in and have almost a cool $1000 left over from what I would spend on the cheapest of the gens I'm considering. I think I'll consider this whole thing awhile before I do anything. I was really surprised by the relative quality of the gens to my best reps. I really expected there to be a big difference. The difference just isn't all that great.

I've been thinking about buying a new gen and I came upon this website that sells what they proport to be gen watches at a big discount. I'm thinking about buying either a Breitling Super Ocean, an Omega Planet Ocean or an Omega Constellation. This site has all of those watches at serious discounts. Any input on which watch to buy would also be welcome. I've never been able to make a link work so I'll just paste in the site. http://www.authenticwatches.com/index.html

I would just take one for a couple of reasons. First of all, there is the customs issue. Secondly, there is also the issue of theft. They can't steal what's on your wrist without mugging you, but can easily take something from your cabin. Finally, one really good rep will never be questioned. Several high dollar watches on the other hand are more likely to be viewed as reps. I'd pick one watch that is likely to attract whatever level of attention you're seeking and go with it.

It helps tremendously, thank you very much. I'll be ordering the watch over the next few weeks and I'll report back on how it goes. I would promise to take pictures, but so far my photographic ability has been poor. In most of my pictures you can tell that it's a watch, but you can discern much more than that. Thanks again.

I do have a watchmaker who works on both my reps and gens. I didn't think about him, thanks for the suggestion. I know now what my next rep is going to be. This is why I'm grateful for this forum.

Thank you for the responses. I'm not sure where it leaves me, however. It's unlikely that I would find a non-AD jewelry store that could do this. I know that I can't do it myself. If you question whether I'm under estimating my ability, I recently posted on the general discussion that I thought my titanium bracelet was irrating my skin. It turned out that it was just dirty. Technical things have never been my long suit. Thanks again for all the thoughtful replies.

I read By-Tor's excellent comparision of the Breitling Super Ocean and the Omega Planet Ocean. Interestingly, these are the two watches I'm considering for my next purchase. I had pretty well decided I would go with the blue Super Ocean and have even looked a the blue dial gen to see if I'd like the look of the rep on my wrist. When I read By-Tor's review, he indicated that the bracelet was hard to adjust. My question is the following. Is this difficulty serious enough that it would present a problem having a jewelry store adjust the band? I would obviously need to choose a non-AD jewelry store to do the adjusting so they would have no prior experience with Breitlings. There are plenty of jewelry stores around where I live that provide this service for a small fee. Should a reasonably competent jewelry store be able to adjust this band? This is an important consideration because there is no way I can do this for myself.

I have the day date version of that watch in white gold. It does make a very nice dress watch.

I happened to look at this very watch tonight at the local AD. It is a very impressive watch. In store light, the color of the dial seemed to change a little as you changed the angle at which you held it. I'm not sure if that is the information that you were seeking. As an aside, I asked what movement and the salesperson (who knew nothing about watches) got the Breitling catalog. The super ocean has a Breitling caliber 17 which is an eta 2824 with nicer finishing. The better spec'd reps have eta 2824 movements so it would seem that this rep is really close to the gen. Here is a link to info on the gen http://www.time2watch.net/supero.htm

It doesn't get much dressier than a patek phillippe, a calastrave perhaps? Or how about a cartier tank? Thinking of 39 mm as a regular size watch shows your age, at least your watch collecting age.

The question is interesting to me at several levels, but partially because it tells us something about the manufacturing cost of the gens. If you can make a rep that is indistinguishable and sell it for a couple of hundred bucks then the manufacturing cost can't be that much higher for the gen. I realize that the movements are better in the gens (even when they use the same movment, it's usually finished a lot nicer) ,the gens have true sapphire glass where the reps probably don't usually and the gens use higher quality ss. But those things can't possibly add up to thousands of dollars in manufacturing costs. That's my interest in asking the question. You see, I'm an economist and these channel distribution questions interest me. It also interests me in terms of how perfect the buyers want the rep to be. My sense since coming to this forum is that the most knowledgeable buyers like a lower priced item with imperfections so they have something to mod. It seems that part of the interest for the most hard core is taking a good rep and making it nearly perfect with one's own skill and ingeneuity.

As I said when I posed the question, I wasn't asking because I want to do it or think it's a good idea. What I am curious to know is whether the general opinion is that there are reps that have gotten that good. A better way to frame my question would be, is there a rep out there that is so good that the only way to know for sure is by opening the case? The scam artists claim that's true of their rolexes, but we all know that's not the case. As I stated intitially, all you would have to do with the rolex is shake and wind the movement. It sounds as though as good as reps have become, there is nothing that would pass really close scrutiny from a knowledgeable person.

If it's not real, we need to find who is sourcing the reps because I want to get one. And I'm not even in the market for anything rolex.

I wasn't really suggesting that you'd hand it over, but would you get nervous if while trying on a gen if the sales person picked up your rep?

I was wondering if there is a rep out there that is so good that you're willing to wear it into an AD? Good enough to let them handle it? Obviously no rolex would fill the bill because a good shake would reveal the truth. I ask the question not wanting to do this, but just wondering if any reps have gotten this good.

The link below is to a collectors website for Panerai. Sorry if this has already been posted here. In any event, they have lots of pictures, information on model numbers, some price lists and so forth. It's not well organized but there is a lot of information in there if you're willing to look. http://www.paneristi.com/

LOL, whatever field that comes from, you have better big words than we do.

I hadn't heard about the potential shortage. The switch away from genuine eta movements is the only piece of evidence that I've seen suggesting a potential decline in quality. And now you've given an alternative explanation for that. My limited knowledge suggests that everything else points to an increase in the quality of reps. The question then becomes, with adverse selection why is this happening? This forum and the others like it are the only forces in the market that I can see driving sellers toward increasing their quality. Those of you who are more knowledgeable may be able to identify other factors.

Crystal, it's interesting that you bring that point up because there is certainly rationale for predicting that rep quality would decline over time. This idea is routed in the concept of adverse selection, an idea developed by two economists several decades ago. They took the market for used cars as an example. For simplicity, they assumed that there were only two kinds of cars, good cars and lemons. Intitially there were equal numbers of each. Because buyers lacked information and couldn't perfectly judge whether a car was good or a lemon, the buyer was willing to pay a price that was the average value of good cars and lemons. This caused some of the sellers of good used cars to withhold their cars from the market, tilting the mix more toward lemons which caused the price to fall even more. This, in turn, caused more sellers of good cars to withhold their cars and so on. Eventually, there were only lemons in the market. The concept of adverse selection has been used to explain behavior in many different markets, notably insurance. Health insurers, for example, set a premium that reflects the average health of insured. Some healthy people tend to opt out choosing to self insure so now there are more sick people relative to healthy. This causes insurance premiums to rise, causing more heatlhy to opt out and so on. This explains why individual health insurance premiums are so high in the U.S. To a certain degree, insurers have to assume that if you buy individual health insurance, you must really need it. If we apply this to the rep market and assume that there are good reps and bad reps, buyers are willing to pay based upon some sort of weighted average quality. That average price is too low to keep attracting sellers of high quality reps causing the mix to change more toward low quality. That causes the price to fall, causing average quality to fall again. The price that buyers are willing to pay declines, driving more sellers of high quality reps from the market and so on. Adverse selection would predict that we end up with a market comprised only of "low quality" reps. While I'm not sufficiently familiar with the workings of the rep market to say for sure that this is happening, the apparent replacement of genuine eta movements with asian copies would appear to be consistent with this trend. Thank you for indulging the economist with his arcane theories.

Richard, I wasn't really trying to condone the practice as much as understand why we seem to accept it. I think the "more honest by comparison" point may be a partial explanation, although I'm sure there are other explanations as well.

Thanks, I trolled all of the dealer ratings forums looking for a posting by you before I asked, but didn't see any postings from you. Too much time has probably elapsed for your posts to be on the first page of these forums. I had been leaning toward Silix for my next purchase for a variety of reasons. It's good to get confirmation that I'm not making a stupid choice. Thanks again.

Pugwash, would it be inappropriate for me to ask who you deal with? If I'm committing some terrible faux pas by asking, I apologize. I have a regular dealer and think he's always done right by me. However, I've learned some things about him since I've found this forum that make me a little uneasy. The reason that I ask is that I'm going to be in the market for a rep very very soon.

When I first started thinking in terms of the tragedy of the commons, I believed that the scam sellers hurt the more legitimate rep dealers. Now I'm not so sure. All of us have seen the websites for the scam sellers and the outrageous claims that they make (i.e. 27 jewel eta movement, reps so perfect that even the most schooled rolex jeweler can hardly tell the difference without opening the case and so forth). Many of us started looking at reps on those sites and either bought or came close to buying an $800-$1000 mistake. After being exposed to those shenigans, the "little white lies" told by the dealers who advertise here seem very tame by comparison. The level of the lies told by "our" sellers, especially after accounting for the price difference relative to the scam sellers, seems to make us feel pretty good about the whole thing. I was a political science minor in college and we used to joke about the politician standard, that is, a person was honest or dishonest relative to the average of all politicians. Have we adopted the "rep standard"? The responses to the person's question about paying for servicing when buying a rep would suggest that we have. Nobody expressed confidence that you actually get the servicing, but all of us have a seller or sellers that we buy from. In other words, I didn't see anyone step up and say "I trust so and so to make sure that the servicing is completed". Nevertheless, we do all have a seller we buy from. There is one more element here; the fact that all of us have displayed a certain willingness to accept risk by buying a product that is illegal to sell. Given that fact, maybe at times we're just grateful to get anything at all after we've paid our hard earned money.