The Under £200ish Watch and occasional Opera Thread! Vol2
Discussion
That is a fabulous watch right up my street with the subtle pattern to the dial and a mix of polishing and brushing on the case and bracelet. If the bracelets fits you and is comfy I would agree with the guys and keep it on it for the moment.
I will not pollute this thread with more expensive watches but I have a true (nice) conundrum over on the small green watch thread that Bobbers has been trying to help me with. I would value people who post on this thread if they were kind enough to give me their thoughts on the two watches recently pictured, your usual kind honesty and insight would be useful.
Cheers, Llentil
I will not pollute this thread with more expensive watches but I have a true (nice) conundrum over on the small green watch thread that Bobbers has been trying to help me with. I would value people who post on this thread if they were kind enough to give me their thoughts on the two watches recently pictured, your usual kind honesty and insight would be useful.
Cheers, Llentil
Llentil the llama said:
That is a fabulous watch right up my street with the subtle pattern to the dial and a mix of polishing and brushing on the case and bracelet. If the bracelets fits you and is comfy I would agree with the guys and keep it on it for the moment.
Cheers guys! 
It is a nice bracelet and suits the watch well so I'll keep it as is for now and see how it goes.
What I often find an issue with bracelet watches is my wrists change size quite a bit with temperature, so if I set a bracelet for a cold wrist its uncomfortably tight when I'm hot and if I set it for a hot wrist its annoyingly loose when its colder. Sometimes I can find an ok middle ground, or the best solution I've found is the nifty ratcheting dive extension on my Citizen BN0100 to adjust the bracelet on the fly.
MattsCar said:
Any love for Citizen Bullheads?
These have just been released and I managed to get 10% off by subscribing to Citizens website.
£358 delivered for both (£179 each), I couldn't decide which one I preferred.
Absolutely love my Promaster Bullhead, they're a great design, and great value at that price.These have just been released and I managed to get 10% off by subscribing to Citizens website.
£358 delivered for both (£179 each), I couldn't decide which one I preferred.
Wallace12R said:
So I had a delivery this morning, I’ll do a little review in a few days after I’ve worn it some more but so far the signs are very positive. It’s a very nice looking watch (thanks Rolex) and think this is definitely going to be a keeper.
Here’s a quick pic to show it off.
Update time after roughly 9 days of wear, and I’m in love. It’s wears perfectly, very similar dimensions if not identical to all other ‘Sub’ type cases but this seems to wear differently and is much more comfortable. There are 0 sharp edges, everything lines up perfectly, the bracelet is good and comfortable with plenty of micro adjust on the clasp. Here’s a quick pic to show it off.
It’s got all the same specs as Steeldive / Addiesdive / Pagani et al but it’s better than them all. Sapphire, BGW9, screwdown caseback and crown. It also has a bidirectional lumed ceramic bezel. I have no comparison with San Martin as I don’t own one, but I honestly don’t see that San Martin is worth the extra £££
Accuracy is good, and pretty much the same as my other NH34 at roughly +5.4spd which is perfectly acceptable.
If you’re in the market for an homage / clomage / whatever you wanna call them then I’d advise looking at WatchDives instead of Pagani, and I’d also say before Steeldive and Addiesdive too.
OK this has been a long time coming. I've been rather busy. Sorry.
I promised a review of buying from Yahoo Auctions Japan, so here it is:
You can't buy from Yahoo Auctions Japan (I'm calling it YAJ from here onwards).
They have all sorts of interwebby techno thingies to stop foreigners from getting on to the site and bidding. But all is not lost, there are a handfull of companies located in Japan who will bid on your behalf and handle the international shipping. Of course they do charge for this, nothing's free in this world.
Firstly, I guess I should cover the "why". Why would you want to buy from Japan? Well frankly there's a pretty decent selection of watches for sale on YAJ. I looked at Seikos and Omegas, there are loads of both. Other Swiss watches are a bit thin on the ground, instead there's a really good selection of Japanese only Seikos - like the Vanac range for example. It's more or less what you'd expect.
If you're looking for a budget Omega, then it's not a bad place to shop. I spent quite a while looking at Omega Polaris watches, this model actually:
Every single one I looked at had been massively over polished. Several had taken a couple of millimeters off the side of the case. It's easy to spot with these as the bands of gold inlay should be the same thickness. Polish the sides and you wind up with skinny bits of inlay.
On the UK market, one of these is worth about £500. On YAJ they were going for the equivalent of £350 to £500. No real saving to be had here (after shipping and import duty, more about that later) and the watches were too messed about with for my taste. I mean, they looked great at first glance, no dinks or dings But they were not in original condition. To me that's important, to you it may not be.
With this in mind I started to look more closely at the other Omega offerings. The overwhelming majority had been messed about with and would be of zero interest to a collector. I'd say YAJ has a higher proportion of mucked up Omegas than ebay. But I suppose in YAJ's favour, the Japanese watches were better presented.
What I did find was that whilst most Omegas were roughly the same price as in the UK, those with oddball movements did seem to be significantly cheaper. You lot shouldn't be surprised to find out I'm talking about hummers. (Yes, again.)
The Seikos were a different story. Perhaps the abundance of these means there is less margin in tarting them up to flip. Perhaps my eye isn't good enough to spot as many duffers. Sure at the bottom of the price range there were plenty of watch cases where the sharp edges had been polished soft, but these are easily discarded.
Mechanical King Seikos were going for £200ish upwards and Grand Seikos for £400ish upwards. Signifcant savings over the UK market where you'd expect £500 and £800 for equivalent watches.
OK, so that's the why, now the how.
As I said, there are several companies who will proxy bid for you. I chose Jauce at random. Buyee was another. I didn't do in depth research to find out if one was cheaper than the other.
With Jauce, you can look at auctions without logging in. Their website uses google translate, which seemed to handle all the text on YAJ with no problems. Annoyingly Jauce had difficulty displaying auctions from one or two sellers, using Buyee I was able to see the items and decide that I didn't want them anyway, so no biggy.
Once you've found something you like, you have to put your money where your mouth is. And you have to do it before you bid. You open an account with Jauce, send them money and only then can you place a bid.
If you think about it, it's the only way Jauce can operate. If you were able to bid without sending funds first, people would ask Jauce to bid and then decide later to pull out. Since it's Jauce that actually place your bid, it's Jauce that would get a bad reputation. Sellers on YAJ are at liberty to cancel an auction AFTER someone has won it. If Jauce were seen to be a bad buyer, sellers would cancel and relist & Jauce's business model would collapse.
When you place a bid through Jauce, you have the option of placing the bid "now" or as a snipe in the last few minutes of an auction. Like ebay it's possible to place a high bid and get the item for much less, you pay one bid increment more than the next highest bidder. Unlike ebay, YAJ auctions automatically time extend by 5 minutes if a bid is placed and there is less than five minutes on the clock... Sniping is not as effective on YAJ as on ebay.
Paying money in to Jauce, I used Paypal. I lost 5% paying in. Since you invariable have to put more money in to your Jauce accout than you need, when you're done you will want to get a refund from Jauce back to Paypal. That's another 5%. I won't be shy, I'll just admit that I put £800 in, spent £550 and had a refund of £250. Just moving the money cost £52.50 ( 0.05*(800+250) )
I bought two watches, an Omega and a Seiko. One of each to test the market.
Starting with the Omega, I paid £239 for the watch, including a Jauce £20 fee for winning the auction. It's immaculate. I think the case has been brushed, but it's not been polished. It is however a non-runner. I was tipsy with horological lust and failed to notice the small print. It is likely to cost £200 - £300 to get it repaired. Once repaired I think it will be worth £700ish. Not as good a bargain as I originally thought, but even with the repair it's not a bad deal.
The Seiko cost me £165 including the fee. It goes nicely and I think it's worth £300ish.
I paid another £40 to Jauce for fees and postage. Don't forget that importing to the UK attracts import duty at 20%.
Long story short, I've saved a bit over buying domestically, but not a massive amount. I had fun and wasted many hours in the process.
I'll post some pretty pictures of the watches themselves shortly.
I promised a review of buying from Yahoo Auctions Japan, so here it is:
You can't buy from Yahoo Auctions Japan (I'm calling it YAJ from here onwards).
They have all sorts of interwebby techno thingies to stop foreigners from getting on to the site and bidding. But all is not lost, there are a handfull of companies located in Japan who will bid on your behalf and handle the international shipping. Of course they do charge for this, nothing's free in this world.
Firstly, I guess I should cover the "why". Why would you want to buy from Japan? Well frankly there's a pretty decent selection of watches for sale on YAJ. I looked at Seikos and Omegas, there are loads of both. Other Swiss watches are a bit thin on the ground, instead there's a really good selection of Japanese only Seikos - like the Vanac range for example. It's more or less what you'd expect.
If you're looking for a budget Omega, then it's not a bad place to shop. I spent quite a while looking at Omega Polaris watches, this model actually:
Every single one I looked at had been massively over polished. Several had taken a couple of millimeters off the side of the case. It's easy to spot with these as the bands of gold inlay should be the same thickness. Polish the sides and you wind up with skinny bits of inlay.
On the UK market, one of these is worth about £500. On YAJ they were going for the equivalent of £350 to £500. No real saving to be had here (after shipping and import duty, more about that later) and the watches were too messed about with for my taste. I mean, they looked great at first glance, no dinks or dings But they were not in original condition. To me that's important, to you it may not be.
With this in mind I started to look more closely at the other Omega offerings. The overwhelming majority had been messed about with and would be of zero interest to a collector. I'd say YAJ has a higher proportion of mucked up Omegas than ebay. But I suppose in YAJ's favour, the Japanese watches were better presented.
What I did find was that whilst most Omegas were roughly the same price as in the UK, those with oddball movements did seem to be significantly cheaper. You lot shouldn't be surprised to find out I'm talking about hummers. (Yes, again.)
The Seikos were a different story. Perhaps the abundance of these means there is less margin in tarting them up to flip. Perhaps my eye isn't good enough to spot as many duffers. Sure at the bottom of the price range there were plenty of watch cases where the sharp edges had been polished soft, but these are easily discarded.
Mechanical King Seikos were going for £200ish upwards and Grand Seikos for £400ish upwards. Signifcant savings over the UK market where you'd expect £500 and £800 for equivalent watches.
OK, so that's the why, now the how.
As I said, there are several companies who will proxy bid for you. I chose Jauce at random. Buyee was another. I didn't do in depth research to find out if one was cheaper than the other.
With Jauce, you can look at auctions without logging in. Their website uses google translate, which seemed to handle all the text on YAJ with no problems. Annoyingly Jauce had difficulty displaying auctions from one or two sellers, using Buyee I was able to see the items and decide that I didn't want them anyway, so no biggy.
Once you've found something you like, you have to put your money where your mouth is. And you have to do it before you bid. You open an account with Jauce, send them money and only then can you place a bid.
If you think about it, it's the only way Jauce can operate. If you were able to bid without sending funds first, people would ask Jauce to bid and then decide later to pull out. Since it's Jauce that actually place your bid, it's Jauce that would get a bad reputation. Sellers on YAJ are at liberty to cancel an auction AFTER someone has won it. If Jauce were seen to be a bad buyer, sellers would cancel and relist & Jauce's business model would collapse.
When you place a bid through Jauce, you have the option of placing the bid "now" or as a snipe in the last few minutes of an auction. Like ebay it's possible to place a high bid and get the item for much less, you pay one bid increment more than the next highest bidder. Unlike ebay, YAJ auctions automatically time extend by 5 minutes if a bid is placed and there is less than five minutes on the clock... Sniping is not as effective on YAJ as on ebay.
Paying money in to Jauce, I used Paypal. I lost 5% paying in. Since you invariable have to put more money in to your Jauce accout than you need, when you're done you will want to get a refund from Jauce back to Paypal. That's another 5%. I won't be shy, I'll just admit that I put £800 in, spent £550 and had a refund of £250. Just moving the money cost £52.50 ( 0.05*(800+250) )
I bought two watches, an Omega and a Seiko. One of each to test the market.
Starting with the Omega, I paid £239 for the watch, including a Jauce £20 fee for winning the auction. It's immaculate. I think the case has been brushed, but it's not been polished. It is however a non-runner. I was tipsy with horological lust and failed to notice the small print. It is likely to cost £200 - £300 to get it repaired. Once repaired I think it will be worth £700ish. Not as good a bargain as I originally thought, but even with the repair it's not a bad deal.
The Seiko cost me £165 including the fee. It goes nicely and I think it's worth £300ish.
I paid another £40 to Jauce for fees and postage. Don't forget that importing to the UK attracts import duty at 20%.
Long story short, I've saved a bit over buying domestically, but not a massive amount. I had fun and wasted many hours in the process.
I'll post some pretty pictures of the watches themselves shortly.
Bobberoo said:
BrokenSkunk said:
blue_haddock said:
Braun do a nice digital watch but they are just a bit too expensive usually for a bit of fun.
Which is a shame as they look quite classy for a digital watch.
This one?Which is a shame as they look quite classy for a digital watch.
I really like it too, but it's an absolutely heffing gigantenormous hipopotanarse of a watch. Far to large for me, although I'm no Bobbers...
I love the look but i cant justify the price so unless i find one on ebay cheap its doubtful i'll ever get one.
And on another tangent i've managed to get my hands on the new timex snoopy chrono.
https://timex.co.uk/products/q-timex-chronograph-x...
Its nice but its for me so that will be heading to ebay.
When I was at school one of my best mates said that their parents had called me a bad influence (they were strict on studying, I wasn't, it's not like I was setting fire to things, honest).
This thread always reminds me of the words 'bad influence'.
I have a thing for the Bremont S300 but it's rather out of my price range, so I started to look for a watch that ticked the blue bezel and white dial box. I'm not really a fan of homage watches but the Pagani PD1865 did stand out. I knew it was too large for me (6" wrist) but when I received an offer on a new one (with box and papers ;-) for a quarter of thread budget I purchased it out of curiosity. I haven't resized the strap yet as I'm not 100% sure I'm going to keep it, but the quality seems really rather good (as others have said about their other models) even at the normal price they're a bargain.
So I now have to decide, sell it on for what it owes me, resize the strap or go for another strap (I fancy something like blue rubber).
Anyway, enough twaddle, here's the best pic I could manage
This thread always reminds me of the words 'bad influence'.
I have a thing for the Bremont S300 but it's rather out of my price range, so I started to look for a watch that ticked the blue bezel and white dial box. I'm not really a fan of homage watches but the Pagani PD1865 did stand out. I knew it was too large for me (6" wrist) but when I received an offer on a new one (with box and papers ;-) for a quarter of thread budget I purchased it out of curiosity. I haven't resized the strap yet as I'm not 100% sure I'm going to keep it, but the quality seems really rather good (as others have said about their other models) even at the normal price they're a bargain.
So I now have to decide, sell it on for what it owes me, resize the strap or go for another strap (I fancy something like blue rubber).
Anyway, enough twaddle, here's the best pic I could manage
BrokenSkunk said:
Hmmn.
Is "Pagani" Chinese for "somebody else's"?
Meaning "Pagani design" would translates to "Somebody else's design".
One of the great ironies of the whole Chinese watch scene. Is "Pagani" Chinese for "somebody else's"?
Meaning "Pagani design" would translates to "Somebody else's design".
I have a feeling that Pagani Design is Mandarin for ‘photocopier skill set’
Anyway, thanks for taking the time to describe your experiences on Japanese online auctions. Let’s hope you get that hummer humming before too long.
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