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After some years into this hobby, it has come to my mind, why do they never manage to make the easiest details right? They make superb cases, crowns and pushers, also dials are very often pretty spot on, but the bracelets or straps are more or less allways crap, and there are allways some minor details they never manage to get right. Example: wrong shaped bezel pearls - misaligned bezels or bezel pearls - misaligned hour markers - wrong shape hour markers - missing AR, or wrong color AR - misaligned text - wrong font on datewheel or bezel numerals - poor applied lume, or no lume at all - lume is ok, but is missing in some areas, compared to gen (missing rehaut lume on earlier versions of AP Diver, SOSF, Hublot Oceanographic 4000m i.e.), different color lume on hands than dial markers, or different lume color on bezel pearl, the list goes on and on. I will go so far to say I suspect they deliberately put in some minor defects and flaws - Things that would be easy to avoid, even so are still aparant. Finger prints and dust on hands and dials, on movement parts (I have a PAM359 with some fingerprints on the rotor). Why on earth did they not use glowes???:-) My theory (and probably many of you have come to the same conclusion): They simply will not make everything right, even on the Ultimate, Super, Final editions. Reason is, if they make a REP too close to GEN (and believe me, I know they are able to make it, so one must use a microscope or lupe to see the difference), they will have massive trouble from the GEN manufacturers, problably from the authorities as well. Since they currently make 90-95 % REPS, it is allways possible to compare to GEN and find the weak spots, at least for the trained eyes. I think factories like Rolex, Breitling and Omega and others, would try much harder to get this business to an end, if they risked having their customers choosing REP models over GENS, because they were so good even the AD would have trouble to see the differences at first sight and items were sold as GENS on EBAY without the geeks like us beeing able to tell them out (still some stupid **** try to put some add and say it is GEN, but these are often really bad REPS and they get reported to EBAY and other sales forums and get banned). The only way to have a near 100 % REP, is to mod the crap out of it, using GEN parts. But then, you really cannot call it a REP anymore, it is more like a hybrid. But the market for Frankens is so little, only a small percentage of the REP buyers go to the extend of dooing this to get as close as possible. Many of the Franken makers, spend thousands of dollars, this is not the market loss for the GEN manufactures. The marked loss is from those with enough buying strenght to afford a GEN, but still they buy REPS (or both REPS and GENS), because they think they are good enough to pull off to their social network without beeing busted. The majority of the REP buyers are people on holiday, or people like us, getting into the wonderful art of mechanical watches, without having the buying strenght to get all those GENS, but still have a small taste of it. Also it is more convenient, as you can have lots of REPS and if you, like myself, get easily bored by one watch or a few alone, you can aquire 10-15 pcs, you tend to use 2-3 watches a week, then change to another 2-3 the next and so on. But the quality of the REPS have improved greatly over the last 5 years, still the same mistakes are made over and over again. Why is there not a proper REP DSSD on the market yet, with proper pearl, proper hour markers and superlume all over? And a properly finished bracelet. If they can manage to make such a nicely finished case and bezel, why can't they make a nicely finished bracelet and deployment clasp as well? The DSSD seems to be a great seller since it was introduced, but they have not made it with superlume yet. I guess the people here liking DSSD would be all over it and it would be another DSSD craze. Plenty of opportunity to earn more cash for the makers and dealers. No superlumed Daytona or Submariner (or have they?) No superlumed Omega PO? And why not any superlumed AP ROO, other than the AP Diver? Instead, they make a superlumed SD and Explorer II.The market for those, I reckon, is far less than the market for DSSD. The bonus is, we have started to have lots of superlumed PAMS. The PAMS have gotten really good over the last years. Maybe Panerai is not such a big treath to the makers as Rolex, Breitling or Omega?