Who Watches the Watchmen (Our Chit Chat Thread)

fulladapipes

Wibbs wrote: »

Kinda mad given Italy was into flats and the like. Both the socialists and fascists were into that sorta thing. Well population growth and urbanisation kinda forced it. Front and back gardens are more a northern Europe thing too. The further south you go urban houses are more about courtyards, all the way back to Rome(which had a lot of flats and communal living. Only the very wealthy had an internal home life) and the later Moorish influence. Personally I always preferred the courtyard vibe, with a nondescript enough front that opens into a very private space.

Maybe the church objected to it because it was modernist? The high rise apartment and communal living is very 20th century modernist, a rejection of the older more organic with more ornament. It's more "protestant" and secular. The previous modernist movement Art Nouveau is far more "catholic" and Baroque couldn't be any more "catholic" if it tried.

I can understand the nazi housing policy. Germany was a very rural agrarian society on top of it's industrial base. Much more than say England at the time.

Just one quote to illustrate why they didn't like flats in particular (apart from the socialist connotations): "beware the moral dangers of the common stairwell".

Fitz II

I have been on internet forums for a long time, and this is the most bewildering digression I have ever read, how did we get here?

Wibbs

Well it's kinda the off topic chit chat thread so..

Fitz II

Wibbs wrote: »

Well it's kinda the off topic chit chat thread so..

Well if there is a place for the sudden unlubricated insertion of a discussion of religious institutions impact on the architecture and civil planning or Irish cities 100 years ago, this is it so. :pac:

banie01

A "Red" Submariner date, with a MK4 dial and its original box and receipt along with 2 additional Rolex straps including the original just valued at £20k on the Roadshow.

mailforkev

banie01 wrote: »

A "Red" Submariner date, with a MK4 dial and its original box and receipt along with 2 additional Rolex straps including the original just valued at £20k on the Roadshow.

Not too badly undervalued like usual. Nice story of the whole family packing up the car and heading off to buy it in the early 70s too.

Wibbs

Antiques Roadshow either overvalue or undervalue watches. They rarely get it even half right(not just watches either). There's been a few howlers from their (panel of)experts over the years. Including one segment on fakes IIRC where they had a frankenwatch as "genuine". Though these experts have nearly always come up via the auction house route and auction houses including the big names can be decidedly crap with watches and valuations. That and the number of dodgy examples that show up on the regular. Then again it was always a profession that beyond the front house shine always a poor reputation on a few fronts. The number of fine art forgeries that have gone through their salesrooms is a long list. Never mind the lack of after sales protection and fees involved. As a buyer you're far more protected buying a vintage piece on ebay than at auction.

banie01

How am I only now seeing the amount of fakes being openly traded on insta!?

The new account has watches in its bio, and there has been a deluge of fake sellers contacting me hawking their wares aswell as "factories" being as suggested follows.

I had no idea Insta was so riven and widespread for it.

Wibbs

The fake thing seems to be becoming more and more "mainstream" of late. There was always the quartz Bolex bought from dodgy hawkers on the Costas, but the "high end" fake stuff was much more underground. Modern production methods can copy scarily accurately and far more cheaply than in the past and centres like China have the production capability and lack of giving a damn on the authorities side so not a shock.

It's been in the vintage arena for a while with certain models. 60's Omega seamasters, Seiko Pogues, both models you'd want to buy from an original family member owner to be sure. Frankens all over the place. Heuer bunds aren't exactly reliable either, though a large blind eye is applied in the market. A few of the hyper rare 40's Rolex/Panerai are suspect. I personally suspect a goodly number of vintage Rolex are fakes, Frankens at best. Certainly if I were making a fake Rolex I'd be looking to ripping off vintage examples. If they can rip off current models with such relative ease a 70's example should be an absolute doddle. More bang for your buck per unit too. A "perfect" fake of a Rolex MilSub could easily net a six figure sum. Yer man John Mayer's example, probably the most "famous" milsub after the talking watches episode had serious questions around it.

Thirdfox

banie01 wrote: »

How am I only now seeing the amount of fakes being openly traded on insta!?

The new account has watches in its bio, and there has been a deluge of fake sellers contacting me hawking their wares aswell as "factories" being as suggested follows.

I had no idea Insta was so riven and widespread for it.

How else can you get reasonable quality SS cases of the Nautilus and Royal Oak in $60 automatics without a massive volume of cases being produced for "non-homages"?

Would be interesting to understand what are the actual numbers involved - 10,000s? 100,000s? (of cases a year)

Fitz II

https://www.ablogtowatch.com/watch-lover-celebrity-john-mayer-sues-bob-maron-buying-replica-rolex-pieces/

This is why I say a million miles away from vintage

Wibbs

Fitz II wrote: »

https://www.ablogtowatch.com/watch-lover-celebrity-john-mayer-sues-bob-maron-buying-replica-rolex-pieces/

This is why I say a million miles away from vintage

Well yeah, at that end it's not unlike the high art market, lots of murky stuff going on.

Though that case was later settled and both parties were remarkably effuse in praise for each other... Which is odd given apparently Rolex expressed concern over his pieces. Something I find interesting as contrary to the article their records aren't particularly great when you go back that far. Certainly not a patch on IWC, Omega or Longines' records. So if they raised concerns the bits and bobs must have been bloody obvious. They generally take a very hands off approach and don't tend to get embroiled in authenticity debates, unless it's an obvious fake of course. Never mind that as a company, even down to today, they will bugger the value of one of their vintage pieces swapping out service handsets, dials etc. Maybe not for high visibility clients? Still, if you had a MilSub in 75 and sent it in for regular Rolex servicing in the interim, chances are extremely high it would end up looking like a standard Sub from that period. There are a few examples like that out there. I'm surprised nobody has gone legal on them for that. A goodly proportion, if not the majority of all original Rolex vintage models left are like that because they were stuck in the back of a drawer for decades, or were only worn on high days and holy days and never saw a Rolex service centre.

Fitz II

Wibbs wrote: »

Well yeah, at that end it's not unlike the high art market, lots of murky stuff going on.

Though that case was later settled and both parties were remarkably effuse in praise for each other... Which is odd given apparently Rolex expressed concern over his pieces. Something I find interesting as contrary to the article their records aren't particularly great when you go back that far. Certainly not a patch on IWC, Omega or Longines' records. So if they raised concerns the bits and bobs must have been bloody obvious. They generally take a very hands off approach and don't tend to get embroiled in authenticity debates, unless it's an obvious fake of course. Never mind that as a company, even down to today, they will bugger the value of one of their vintage pieces swapping out service handsets, dials etc. Maybe not for high visibility clients? Still, if you had a MilSub in 75 and sent it in for regular Rolex servicing in the interim, chances are extremely high it would end up looking like a standard Sub from that period. There are a few examples like that out there. I'm surprised nobody has gone legal on them for that. A goodly proportion, if not the majority of all original Rolex vintage models left are like that because they were stuck in the back of a drawer for decades, or were only worn on high days and holy days and never saw a Rolex service centre.

Yes there was a suspicious settlement and all parties were keen to save eachothers face in it. But this goes to show....Rolex themselves, a Vintage Guru and a Uber collector and none could agree on what was cosher and what was bogus....

Wibbs

Fitz II wrote: »

Yes there was a suspicious settlement and all parties were keen to save eachothers face in it.

Yep and like the art market when stuff like this comes out there are so many vested interests with millions at stake in the market appearing legit that such confidence shakers are quickly silenced.

But this goes to show....Rolex themselves, a Vintage Guru and a Uber collector and none could agree on what was cosher and what was bogus....

Well I reckon you can remove the collector out of the equation Fitz. Seems like a lovely chap, but I'd bet the farm that most of his knowledge comes from dealers. The very ones flogging him the pieces. I doubt he's had the time to build up a layer of expertise through forums and long term collecting. He basically went from zero to Milsubs and Big Pilots and Pateks. You've got some heavy hitters in your collection today, but you didn't go from Casio to Lange overnight. You did your own legwork. If you went mad and went into vintage I'd bet the farm you wouldn't jump into 30k vintage out of the gate. You'd go OCD and do legwork there too. You're far less likely to get ripped off because of that.

Rolex can be somewhat discounted too. They tend to avoid any such entanglements, their records aren't great and even if they were up to IWC/Longines/Omega standards back then the paper trail for bought in parts like dials, handsets, bracelets was a lot less involved for all the brands. Pretty much nobody realised how nuts the hobby and market would go and how anal buyers would get. Rolex spotting that the case serial didn't match the movement serial would be about the height of it. You could swap out all the other gubbins and leave the serial number plate and nobody would be any the wiser. Actually you could likely get away with that today. "Improving" a basic Sub to a rare and far more valuable one would be relatively easy. Things like milsubs and comex serial ranges are out in the wild and enough of the originals have been lost, or are stuck in drawers somewhere.

So that leaves dealers... Well let's just there are plenty I could link right now where they have redials and frankens all over the place from different brands and eras and charging big for same.

So yep I would agree 100% with you Fitz vintage is a minefield that needs an OCD level of attention to detail in the buyer and some models are to be avoided.

Pablo_Flox

Another review of the Vostok Amphibia; this time from Teddy Baldassarre.

There seems to have been a big uptick in Vostok getting reviewed over the last few weeks, I wonder if that is a coincidence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiPqRZ8XWDY

Wibbs

Roubles in brown envelopes flying around the place. Teddy's recent caller...

Fitz II

I have to say, his photography is terrific and he does review well.

James Bond Junior

Fitz II wrote: »

I have to say, his photography is terrific and he does review well.

Is there anything Putin can't do!??

Cienciano

James Bond Junior wrote: »

Is there anything Putin can't do!??

Make a cup of tea that I'd drink

Blanchy90

Pablo_Flox wrote: »

Another review of the Vostok Amphibia; this time from Teddy Baldassarre.

There seems to have been a big uptick in Vostok getting reviewed over the last few weeks, I wonder if that is a coincidence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiPqRZ8XWDY

I'll have to hold off reviewing one for my channel :pac:

I'll actually be building one in an upcoming video so it'll be a bit different from the normal reviews

scwazrh

Blanchy90 wrote: »

I'll actually be building one in an upcoming video so it'll be a bit different from the normal reviews

That will be interesting.I’m starting to get an interest in building / modding a watch lately so look forward to that

Blanchy90

scwazrh wrote: »

That will be interesting.I’m starting to get an interest in building / modding a watch lately so look forward to that

Vostok is a great way to go if you want to start modding, its much cheaper than going for a seiko build and there are loads of options for mod parts

banie01

This will probably be of little interest to anyone other than Wibbs but anyway!

The timing issues I was encountering with my Astronaut.
I've figured it out, when the watch was returned I had modded to take 1.5v battery versus the original 1.35v.
Ease of sourcing being the primary reason for this.
Watch now uses a 1.5v in a spacer with no diode.

Anyway with this setup the watch was running consistently fast.
As suggested a while back by Wibbs, I sourced a 1.35v battery setup.
Then the watch ran slow

But that kicked off a brainwave that perhaps the 1.5v battery I was using was over copying/discharging.
A quick check on the multimeter showed that the battery was giving a steady 1.63v, leading to running fast.

Swapped it for a tested 1.5v and have it on the wrist since the 4/5 and it is running within 1sec of the originally set time

Moral of the story?
Check the actual battery output!

Wibbs

Great result. Those movements can be very accurate if you get a good one. I've had similar with other early electronic and quartz movements. Back then they could be extremely finicky as far as voltages go. They didn't have the compensation of modern stuff. I've also been surprised at how variable even good brand batteries can be and how they could vary over time. I found Renata to be the most consistent. Duracell could be a coin toss.

darragh o meara

Lads, coming looking for advice again. I’m looking at some watches on Chrono24 at the moment. Most of the ones I’m interested in are UK based.

Any tips on getting them over without being fleeced with import duties etc? I could probably hold off a while and travel over to pick one up in person.

Or am I better to try source one in the EU and save the hassle?

micks_address

darragh o meara wrote: »

Lads, coming looking for advice again. I’m looking at some watches on Chrono24 at the moment. Most of the ones I’m interested in are UK based.

Any tips on getting them over without being fleeced with import duties etc? I could probably hold off a while and travel over to pick one up in person.

Or am I better to try source one in the EU and save the hassle?

Well the obvious one is if you know anyone in NI to get it posted to. I just bought a watch from the Uk this way.. colleague lives in Armagh and reposted to me in Dublin

Cyrus

micks_address wrote: »

Well the obvious one is if you know anyone in NI to get it posted to. I just bought a watch from the Uk this way.. colleague lives in Armagh and reposted to me in Dublin

where did he post from? if its from the north is it not the same issue / risk?

unkel

Cyrus wrote: »

where did he post from? if its from the north is it not the same issue / risk?

Yes it is, you're right. Unless the seller / colleague can show that the watch was already in NI prior to 2021

The only way to dodge the VAT and probably get away with it is going over personally (or get someone else to come over personally)

Not sure if we are even allowed to discuss ways of tax evasion on boards though if I'm honest...

darragh o meara

unkel wrote: »

Not sure if we are even allowed to discuss ways of tax evasion on boards though if I'm honest...

My bad, I think I’ll look at Europe instead. Any recommendations for sellers of Omega particularly seamaster 300 and newish enough model.

CarProblem

Question - obviously it's a business and can do what it wants but.......Watchfinder

I know Rolex is desirable, unobtainable and sells 2nd hand miles above retail, but I often saw people here and elsewhere say, even still, WF prices are, ahem, frothy

What I don't understand is other brands, that are obtainable easily at RRP yet for sale with WF for miles above RRP.

Asking €4,290 vs RRP of €3,530

Both Keane's and Sheeran's told me no problem getting one