Greetings!

**RichardL2509** · 12-21-2010, 12:04 AM

Hello everyone - Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I have been lurking for several days, and benefiting from your excellent and insightful comments and banter. I figure it is time to introduce myself. My name is Richard, and I do not currently own any replicas. I am the recipient of my father-in-laws generosity; he recently gave me one of his Rolex watches, a 1969 “Thunderbird”. Prior to this watch, I wore a Tag F1 Chronograph on my wrist. I also own a couple of watches from Alpha - a GMT, which bears a similarity to a Rolex Explorer II, and an Alpha Daytona, which is similar to a Paul Newman Daytona, panda dial. I have a fascination with automatic and hand-wind movements. I purchased the GMT to keep up with my brother as he served in Afghanistan, and I have always enjoyed timing things, thus the F1 and the Alpha Daytona. Unfortunately, the Alpha Daytona is back with Alpha for the second time. The movement is a Seagull ST-19. For whatever the reason, my “Paul Newman” has not been very reliable, but Alpha has always been very responsive to repairs and honored their warranty.

I find the posts on this forum to be very interesting, particularly the give-and-take in your posts concerning the validity of your brand of horology - genuine versus replica, and the ethics around replicas versus homages. My hypothesis is that many of you know much more about the genuine articles than most of the folks that own the genuine articles. I suppose that if I were to purchase a replica, I would choose a SS Daytona (possibly vintage). I read here that that is a dicey proposition though, which is unfortunate. I read a lot of warnings about being “called out”, to avoid such, I suppose choosing a replica that is congruent with your age and station in life is key. I would not expect a young man to wear a solid gold watch, for example. I would expect him to wear a simpler Explorer, perhaps vintage, which could give the appearance that he inherited the watch.

One interesting comment about my vintage Rolex. When I received it from my father-in-law, it had hands more appropriate for a Sub or Explorer. He explained that since he was an amateur pilot at that time, he wanted a little more visibility from the hands. The dealer was more than happy to accommodate his request, and exchanged the hands. I recently sent the watch in to Rolex for service ($650 of the best), and they replaced the substituted hands for the original style to the watch. So - in the old days of Rolex, customers probably readily changed out parts to suit their specific needs.