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PAM082 - Special Edition for 2000, Luminor Marina Militare Vespucci. Should be simple enough to produce - just needs the blue dial and the engraved solid back. I'd also like to see any of the Purdey model with the hunter cover. You should be able to change the covers around, so you could purchase one watch and any number of engraved covers. There should also be an unengraved cover so you could engrave it any way you wanted. My collection would be complete with those two additional watches ;-)

There have been a few different versions of this watch, some better than others. The authentic is made from tantalium. A rep in titanium is closest in color, but the weight is way off. There have been some reps that use a brushed SS case, but the color is really off on that. The hands should of course be blue - that's part of what makes that watch special. Also, the subdial should be recessed. It's quite obviously wrong if the subdial isn't recessed to anyone who knows that model.

Admin, you're getting screwed. I thought it was obscene to be charged the $100 to send the watch to Swatch Canada. How much does it cost to send something by FedEx or DHL insured? And it wouldn't surprise me if the AD sends a few items together to cut down their shipping costs. If I spent that kind of money on the watch I would expect them to cover a few dollars of shipping costs. And then they want another $100 just to receive the watch! BTW, could there have been a defect with the clasp? How did the watch fall off your wrist if the deployant only opened up? If there's a defect with the clasp that caused all of the problems, perhaps you can get the watch repaired under warranty. Scream a little. Make a fuss. Unfortunately you're probably going to have to pay most of this but you might be able to knock it down at least a little. Best of luck...

I used a WU location within a Safeway - a large supermarket chain here in Northern California. I paid with cash, not with a credit card or debit card. Was still charged $29.99 to send $220.

I still love that story. I hope I can do something like that some day, although I don't own any watch that I'd be willing to part with like that... It's rarely a good idea to call someone on their watch. If it's a horrible fake - who cares? Those horrible watches are no worse than the cheap junk you could find in Walmart and various malls. If it's a great copy then perhaps you'd like to find out where they got it from, but how could you be sure it really was a copy then? The other day I saw someone with a huge Breitling type watch on. I walked towards him to get a better look at the watch and saw that it had those fake tourbillions/balance wheel. Didn't say a word. He obviously liked the watch enough to wear it so what possible good would come of pointing out an obvious fake?

I too am located in California, but I'm getting charged much more to use WU. The last time I send money from a WU location paying with cash, I was charged $29.99 to send $220. Granted, it was going to Canada and not China, but I've been charged similar amounts when sending money to Asian countries as well. What do you need to do to get the $14 charge?

I too have tested many dozens of replicas and agree with TJGladeRaider that there's rarely any problems with the watches. This too has been bugging me for a long time, and it's not just about replicas. Many places seem to think that a watch rated to 3 atm is good for nothing more than washing your hands and you need watches rated to 10 or 20 atm before you can safely go swimming or scuba diving with them. The rational is that while you're swimming you're moving about and the pressure increases. Or when you enter the water that will increase the pressures beyond what the watch is rated for. The pressure at the surface is 14.7 psi. For every 10 meters you go down the pressure increases by 14.7 psi. A watch rated to 3 atm/30 meters would experience 58.8 psi. 10 atm/100 meters would be 161.7 psi and 20 atm/200 meters would be 308.7 psi. So could anyone explain why I can't sit in a tub with a watch rated 3 atm? How is that going to be exposed to anything near 60 psi? How about swimming in a pool? Just how much pressure will the watch be exposed to entering the pool; diving into the pool or swimming with it? I let's say I want to go scuba diving. Why do I need a watch rated to 20 atm/200 meters/300 psi? How fast can I really move my hands under water? Enough to create an additional 250 psi? For the record, I've washed the dog and the car while wear my replicas. I've gone swimming with them and spent countless days at a water park enjoying all of the rides with my son - and not once has a watch failed. Haven't taken on scuba diving yet, but that's only because I haven't gone diving recently.

You asked about "real GMT movements" and also wanted "unmodified movements." This is really going to depend on how you define these items. If by unmodified you mean an ETA movement, then the ETA 2893 "GMT" movement is what you want. This movement is used in a number of authentic watches to add the second time zone feature. However, what's a 100% Asian movement that supports a second time zone called? Wouldn't that also be "unmodified" since it was probably designed to support that feature? It also depends on what you mean by GMT movement. Many companies will call a watch with the 2893 a GMT watch. Sure, it has a 12 hour hand and a 24 hour hand and you could set the 24 hour hand to keep track of Zulu time. However, if you wanted a watch where the 24 hour hand kept track of Zulu/GMT/home and the 12 hour hand to be set to whatever time zone you're currently it, that movement really doesn't work that well. You would need something that operates the way an authentic Rollie GMT Master IIs do it. There were some GMT watches out a while ago that reversed the positions of the hour and 24 hour hands and there are rumors of some other watches being available some time soon. Also, don't necessarily believe everything you read. The 2893 is a great movement. That movement is used in many expensive authentic watches and can be worked on by competent people. Besides, if that was such a horrible movement, why was everyone so happy when Eddie was able to sell a bunch of them last month?

While I too prefer not to get chronos wet - it's too easy to push a pusher and there are extra holes where water could get in, every watch will lose water resistance over time. If you spend a lot of them in the water, get it tested yearly and/or every time the case is opened. The O-rings to break down over time and need to be re-greased/replaced periodically. BTW, a solid back should be slightly more reliable than a display back. Found that out the hard way recently...

That bugs me the most - for all sorts of items. What value does that last retailer really add to a $4K watch (or $20 book or $100 pair of shoes or $4 pineapple?) The shoe store does add some value, you often would want to try on a pair of shoes before buying them, and a grocer does make it convenient for you to purchase most of your food items in one location. Book stores offer some value if you want some reading material, but often if you want a specific book they don't have it. It's just as easy for me to stay at home and order it online (for less) than to drive to a bookstore, only to be told they could order it for me. And something like the $4K watch? As many people have already said, the sales people know much less about the watch than you do. Why should they make $1,600 on that $4K watch? What did they do to possibly justify adding that much to the cost of the watch? I'd just as soon purchase the same watch over the internet for $3K and let the manufacturer pocket the extra $600. I don't mind paying for something, if I'm actually getting something of value for my money, but I find that many retail outlets add little to nothing of value, and if anything add inconveniences to a purchase. I would much rather purchase directly from a manufacturer if they're set up to deal with end customers, or at least purchase from the a wholesaler who purchases directly from the manufacturers and makes a fair profit for collecting orders and mailing out the correct items.

I too agree that many of the replicas we purchase are better watches than what you'd buy in a mall for similar prices, but I wouldn't worry so much about the watch having a mineral crystal. It's interesting that many of the authentic watches I like that have MSRPs between $600 and $1K or so have mineral glass while our $200 replicas often come with sapphire, but I also realize that it costs very little to replace a crystal. If you like the Swiss Army or any other watch, don't worry about it having a mineral glass crystal. If/when the crystal gets damaged you can always upgrade to a sapphire cyrstal.

Mod the tool. We make all those mods to our watches, why not on the tools used to work on them? That case opening tool works on most 44 mm Luminors and may or may not work on the 45 mm Radiomirs. Unmodified they'll almost certainly not work on the 47 mm PAMs. However, you can make the slot longer and grind another slot to hold the screw in place and you can get them to work on very large watches.

Be careful about the shower. Getting rained on or taking something out of the sink is fine, but I'm not sure how good that test would be for shower use. It's possible you could have a very hard spray of water coming from the shower, and the warm temperatures may also adversely affect the water resistance. Personally I don't worry about my watches after I've tested them and often get them wet, but I still don't wear them in the shower or in a hot tub.

That is one way to test it of course, but I'd rather loose my RWG$ playing blackjack than loose a watch like that... Now granted, more than likely the PAMs are water resistent as received, especially to a depth of 3 inches or so. However, I would at least make sure the backs are tight, since I've received watches where I could unscrew them with my bare hands. I've also received a couple that were missing the O-rings on the back, but that's just really bad luck if you end up with one like that. Personally, I'd rather test the watches in a pressure tester. Granted, that's easy to say if you own one, but before I got my own I took my watches to have them tested. I think I paid $10 once, and the other times it was free. Taking out the movement will of course save it if the case does leak, but you still wouldn't know if the watch is water resistent when you put it all back together.

I know that wearing clothes with horizontal or vertical stripes can make you seem taller/shorter or thinner/fatter, but I doubt that a larger watch will make you seem taller. If anything, wearing a huge watch makes you seem smaller than you are, almost like a kid who wears daddy's watch. If you are overweight, a larger watch worn loosely may make you look a little less heavy, but that probably has very little overall affect. Not sure what a complicated looking, chronograph watch does. I've only seen one person wearing an authentic huge Breitling and it actually seemed appropriate on him as he was probably about 6'4" or 6'5". Many people wear quartz watches will all sorts of features, and I've never gotten the impression that they're taller as a result of that. However, I have gotten the impression that people are probably shorter/smaller than they are when they're wearing excessively thick watches.

Power reserve is supposed to be 46 hours, and the few that I've checked ran a couple of hours longer. If you're not going to wear it every day then simply wind it whenever you need to - it should run for two days. However, if you're going to wear if for days at a time, wind it every 24 hours or so. Just be careful when screwing down the crown. Don't force it.

You can also look here for supplys and leather: http://www.tandyleather.com/ Of course, it's much easier if you're near one of their retail locations and can simply walk in and look at the leather material on hand - and I realize that doesn't help the original poster that much... Try to make your first straps with scrap material - you really don't need very much material at all. A belt or small purse would do nicely, and if you could find an old jacket you'd really have enough material for dozens of straps. Old furniture or car seats might be another good source of materials.

9 pm and 3 am - good habit to get into - never try to adjust the date a few hours before and after midnight. On some movements, doing so could damage the movement. I believe that The Zigmeister mentioned exactly why this was. Not all movements are affected by this, but if you never do it you'll be fine. If you need to advance the date and the time is around midnight, pull the crown all the way out and adjust the time to 3:00 am or so. Then you can push the crown in one position and adjust the date as needed.

The replica prices certainly don't seem great, but have you found any nice Russian watches there? The prices that you find on some of the web sites selling Russian time pieces seem out of line with what I think they should cost.

Most movements could probably get close to COSC standards. I think I only have one watch that wouldn't make that, and it's an old Russian one. Even that with a service might get close. There are various conditions necessary to get the COSC certificate, but overall it needs to be within +6/-4 seconds/day. That sounds good, expect that also translates to +3/-2 MINUTES/month. I personally wouldn't be happy with a watch that gained 6 minutes in the two months between a date change. If the movement is clean and properly oiled, you should be able to get it pretty accurate depending on how you wear the watch. You can often fudge a bit when you set the watch down. Some positions may cause the watch to run a little slower and others a bit faster. I have gotten some of my watches to be perfect over many months - got the regulation just right and then set them down correctly to gain or loose a bit as needed. However, with all of the watches now I only keep a few running at any given time (perhaps two or three for a week before switching watches) All of them are accurate enough that they're only off by a few seconds in the course of a week - certainly more than good enough for what I need.

All of the 44 mm Luminors are roughly the same size. There are a few differences, such as which version of the PAM212 you get, but it's no more than one mm or so between all of the versions.

I'm not sure exactly what is used on the PAM PVD replicas, but whatever it is it does hold up reasonably well. They've been out for about a year now and I've not heard or seen any problems such as the coating flaking off of anything like that. However, just like an authentic watch with PVD coatings, it will get scratched. That's actually part of the "charm" of those watches, how they wear and patina with time. Just wear the watch, try to be careful not to get huge gouges in it, but don't worry too much about it. BTW, a black Sharpie can be used to to sorta hide minor scratches. I just color in the scratch and then use my finger to wipe it out blend it with the rest of the watch. Don't go overboard doing this, but it will minimize how obvious the scratch is.

I like the ivory color, although I don't care for the new dial layout. Just having that one '12' doesn't seem right. Although it's not like that company is asking for my opinion on the matter. I don't have a 188 yet, so perhaps I'll pick up a new rep in a few months

It may or may not work depending on which PAM replica you have. For almost a year, every 6497 based Luminor I handled had exactly the same case and the crown guards were interchangeable. Can't say that I ever tried to move a SS crown guard to a titanium watch, but I moved many SS ones around or titanium ones to other titanium watches or PVD guards to other PVD watches, and they always used the same sized screws and hole spacing. Then this year I've starting seeing different cases. I can't tell them apart just by looking at them, but the crown guards are not always interchangeable. Same thing with the screw on backs - they're coming in different sizes. I suspect that it's due to other manufacturers getting into the game, but I have no way of knowing that for sure. The watches seem to have the same quality: AR coated sapphire cyrstals, Swiss ETA 6497 movements, nice looking dials and cases, but they're not identical.

Here's one I got a few years ago that first got me interested in sundials: http://www.digitalsundial.com/ Very easy to read the time, but it's only accurate to within about +/- five minutes Another site I heard about recently: http://www.heliosuhren.de/E_frames.html Seems rather pricey, but they make some beautiful sundials.