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vdb trade practices


mellons

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The RG Vintage thing was nothing to do with bruised egos, more to do with a takeover attempt by some people. Fortunately the membership wouldn't stand for it and the mods put a stop to it, subsequently leading to the formation of W-C.

See what you write when you don't have a clue about facts? W-C was created by a number of members (including me) that were not happy with how the infractions by the owner were being handled (FACTS that led to Sylar being ousted, interesting enough some of which had to do with selling rep parts as gens) and the overall lack of accountability (problems that fortunately have now been addressed by folks like Sfa). It had absolutely nothing to do with vintage drama.

You certainly has unresolved issues with Joe and others for things that happened on another forum and I'm really not interested in debating this with you, specially in a place that has little to do with the background drama.

Over and out.

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I actually read through a couple of the longer threads and in reality this is a movie that has played out many times before on all these forums. I will always believe that VDB started out with the best of intentions. I bought one of his very first watches. Was it perfect? Absolutely not, in fact it needed some rework by the Zigmeister at the time. But it looked like a step forward and was well put together. I didn't regret the purchase. And I do believe that VDB did move the hobby forward. Fast forward and the modder has decided to make it a full time business and now the party is over. And this party was made worse by having the full time support of one of the larger forums to the point where owners and admin were getting special deals,organizing GTG's on their behalf, precluding other offerees on their forum and not allowing any negative comments. In fairness, those issues have been fixed on the other forum and so it is not a criticism of the forum. All forums make mistakes and they can be rectified.

The whole issue of selling fabricated parts as gen is tremendously troubling. But I can also tell you that I am aware of some very very expensive non-gen parts which people have subsequently sent me pictures of from his watches. I know that he paid thousands of dollars for them. Some were offered to me and I always wondered where they ended up. In any case the real moral of the story is that people should tread carefully. More importantly, forums should as well if their primary role is to protect the membership. Frankly we were always criticized for not being aggressive enough on the vintage stuff. Nice miss, huh? ;)

Vintage started before VDB with legends like Kenzo, Enzo, Madasboot, Ross, etc. VDB was another chapter. And now folks like Francisco, Clint Eastwood, Kbiz, etc. will continue to move this vintage hobby forward.

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i have bought 3 vdb's. one of them is a new 3646 case.

all were sold with "serviced movements". none of the movements had been serviced. all 3 of the movements died less than a week of receiving them.

one of the cases was a stock DSN 6152-1 case (it even had the ugly lug engravings), but was sold as a reshaped case.

his newest creations have many problems also. here are some pics of a "serviced Rolex 618":

BTW pics are from the Zigmeister, who did an incredible job in restoring this movement.

afterdialremoval.jpg

keylesscoverremoval.jpg

keyless1.jpg

cannonrustedtohour.jpg

cannonpinremoved.jpg

anotherview.jpg

Movement After CLeaning

aftercleaning.jpg

Franken Rolex 618 (work done by Zigmeister)

-movement disassembled - every screw was loose - movement very dirty - found dial side and keyless works rusted solid - all motion work gears rusted - hour wheel rusted to cannon pinion - movement soaked in penetrating oil overnight - cleaned - frozen gears carefully disassembled - all gears cleaned of rust and polished

-movement was so dirty that it completely contaminated the cleaning fluids - fluids disregarded

-over 3 hours required to clean and disassemble rusted parts

-cannon pinion friction extremely low

-hand and dial lume very poor quality - back of hands had big blobs and lumpy lume - could not install hands correctly - excess lume removed from back of hands - hands installed parallel and flush

-crown spring is very weak - difficult to switch to winding from time setting

In the end the Zigmeister saved the movement with his amazing skills so i'm very happy with my watch.

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