Watchmeister

If you have had two prior good transactions and it is a trusted dealer just be patient. With all the recent disruptions and the fact that you are buying illegal goods patience is the price we are increasingly facing.

I have to agree on the Orchard Road. With all the great AP reps out there I would avoid one of the very few that uses the wrong metal. You won't go wrong with any of the later models that have better date spacing and font, correct metal and rounded pushers (although you can easily do it yourself). Just pick the model you like. The CP is a great watch but beware that you will likely scratch the bezel sooner rather than later and the only way to fix it (because of the sand blasting) is to redo the whole finish. I would not make it my only AP. I have one (or at least one with that case) and having gotten it resurfaced I make it a point only to wear it under a suit or shirt that covers the watch.

Congrats. Nice stuff. Sear them well.

I am with everyone else. Head looks gen. Bracelet obviously not. The seller is a legit jewelry seller and he makes no assertion about the whole thing being original or bracelet gen. Unfortunately, it is written in EBay watch speak. If the price stays close to where it is you will be in good shape to pick up a new bracelet and still be ahead of the game.

great to hear from you.

Why do u have so many frankens and gen straps?! so jealous..

looks great!

Thanks. I actually have pared down my AP franken collection over the years to two.

On the question of gen straps - I tend to buy them second hand and there is a seller on ebay who offers them and he happens to be down the street from me. The issue with second hand AP straps is that although they are lovely they are actually poorly designed, tend to fall apart and so I always feel the need to inspect the strap in person. He showed me a half a dozen the other day and I know he will be putting them up on the bay.

Ahh, the Noob vs H factory debate. Different people have different opinions and it varies by model at some level. IMHO, the minute that H elexted to go with a non geb bezel construction I wrote them off but that is me. In any case, you will never know with Noob and the boutique editions until they either do them or don't. I had been hearing the same comments though about difficulties in sourcing parts, etc. and so it seems like they are beingmore selective about what they make and the size of the runs. THe last thing you want to do is get raided with massive parts inventory. You would hjave thought they would have figured out who to pay off in the Triads by now,

Having gotten back a fantasy franken from the Great North with a beautiful resurfacing a couple of weeks ago I have been searching for that perfect strap ever since. And so yesterday I wandered over to my favorite second hand gen strap dealer to pick up a recent purchase and at last I have found my one and only strap for this baby (it is such a pain in the neck to change straps on the AP's) - so here we have it..... Apologies for the crappy pics but I was so excited I couldn't wait until morning. Hopefully you agree.

this exclusivity bullshite is what put me off gens

Reps have always been far more exclusive than gens. That is why we love them.

We are now using 3 x i7-920 Quadcore server with 24 GB RAM. All three is behind a load-balancer, where 2 of them are dedicated webservers and the third is a dedicated DB-server. The webservers are running CentOS, with a custom setup of apache. nginx and Varnish.

Sounds like the description of my 80's car stereo. I have no idea what you are talking about but this forum is running like Speedy Gonzalez - Arriba, Arriba!

Torobravo seems to get stuff from them and although I have never used him I have heard good things about his service from others.

Now I get it. It is the Walmart.

Great progress. The search for perfection,

WM

"And although you can disagree with a Fed Chief's philosophies or methods I still feel strongly that its being a reasonably autonomous organization (and not at the whim of politicians whose only concern is re-election) has been of paramount importance to the U.S. and global economy."

I agree for the most part , but would have liked it if Ron Paul's audit in depth had happened. And this is key (and not at the whim of politicians whose only concern is re-election), those guys are a bunch of *&*&*&, for sure. (insert derogatory adjective of choice)

I am not familiar with the audit issue but if it is designed to have congress mucking around with the Fed system I am not in favor of it. It is going through a interesting transition at the moment. Until Bernanke took it over it was a completely secret process run by folks like Burns, Greenspan, Volcker, etc. IMHO it is a better version of the Supreme Court. People have finite but longer terms and as a result it is never purely liberal or conservative. IMHO, no one deserves a tenured life long position dictating serious policy - whether legal or economic.

I will bite. What is world of watches?

You might put out a want to buy for a mixed metal bracelet. Years ago there was a SS/TI rep bracelet made. They must have gone somewhere.

That's a fairly general statement. They helped out in 1907 when Roosevelt threatened to take over all trusts unless they got there act together after they backed some goof ball trying to corner the cooper market. They also threw their fellow brethren a life line a few times in the late 1800's.

Perhaps you could give some facts about the JP Morgan bail out during the Great Depression. This may help compare to the bail out the banks received in 2008.

Sent from outside your window......Hi!

I wasn't trying to compare one bail out to the other. In the Great Depression (or really the predecessor Panic) there was no other effective predecessor organization so Morgan had to step up....simply because there was no one else. The government had no organization, capability or even the credibility to deal with a crisis. This bailout was the opposite. The government had the capability and folks can debate until the cows come home whether the right measures were (or are still being) taken.

What I do find laughable are the conspiracy theories about the Fed and it's being run by the banks. The bank conspiracy story emanates from that period. Today it is about as independent an organization as is possible. And although you can disagree with a Fed Chief's philosophies or methods I still feel strongly that its being a reasonably autonomous organization (and not at the whim of politicians whose only concern is re-election) has been of paramount importance to the U.S. and global economy.

Oh how quickly people forgot. In the Great Depression JP Morgan bailed out the U.S. and not vice versa.

Can I ask what one of these is approx worth (with true forged carbon case, gen strap, etc?)

Also, do these have any lume or not?

$50k and if you have the watch you don't need lume. You have a slave following you around with a flashlight.

Here's a nice shot of my qc

D- Me likey. You guys are killing me. Prefer this one to the Ramon....Dying for a Mr.Z.....It is going to be an expensive 2013.

What did you lift? A pint?

This is my favorite quote from the outcome of the election:

"Someone asked me, Why did Mitt Romney lose? And I said because he got less votes than Barack Obama, that's why."

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie ®

True this time. But not always.

Holy crap. That strap puts it over the top.

No one is gong abywhere. When this finally comes together it will be epic.

W, its a V8 but non turbo. nicely tuned to do the 0-60 in 3.8sec though

Cars are a matter of personal choice.. like you said, you wont get a two seater even with a million dollars in the bank

You are so right on the two seater. I do love Audi's and went with the next best thing. S-8 naturally aspirated V-10 (the detuned Lambo engine). I think I get zero miles to the gallon.

Back to the topic at hand, I am jonesing for that GP. Mr.Z's piece is gorgeous.