Quote Originally Posted by aamajzoub View Post

Finally, regarding this last paragraph, I tend to completely disagree with you. The price is not always relative with the quality/resemblance and the more gen parts is not always the better. Some modders/members are just better than others.

I will give two examples for this;

The 1.5K franken that I was seriously interested in had numerous gen parts, but the actual base watch that was used was way off the gen. I was paying 1.5k for a 4.5k watch that only looked good on the front view and is completely off (thickness/proportions/curves) from all other sides. This is obviously a bad franken to me.
While on the other hand, I was interested in a 500euro 1680 that had only a gen crystal. However, the mid case shape/details of the bezel/dial/insert/hands were insanely similar to the gen. That was a very good deal to me. And in that specific case I was the first to pm the seller, yet gone with another member. I was really frustrated about this specific watch..

Also, please note that the latter had a swiss eta while the former was going on an Asian.

But regardless of all this, my original post was NOT about the frankens price and the resemblance of the gen. It was only tackling the misleading useless comments happening in almost all threads. Everyone has the right to post his own comments, but for me I stopped reading those, or at least taking them into consideration when buying an expensive rep.

And you can’t really know which member has enough experience to follow his comments. As I said my first intention was to describe the experience of a new member buying a rep watch (mainly from M2Ms). It does not make any sense for anyone who's looking only to buy a good rep, to spend few months researching/reading/posting in able to do so.

Anw sorry again for the long post, I don’t mean to disrespect anything/anyone here.
Without going into another long post, I just want to comment on this last section. It's clear that you may have misunderstood the underlying ideas I was trying to make earlier (just was explaining the reality of the hobby, and not trying to "prove you wrong"). Unfortunately, you are right in that new members don't necessarily equal bad people to deal with, but are treated with caution just because they are new. It's not just here. I've had the same issue on other boards I participate in too. For every member like you, I'm sure the senior members could show you hundreds of new members that just want to join, buy a rep quickly, and disappear. Is it unfair? That could be debated forever.

I will ask a question though. How do you know you were the first to PM? Did the seller tell you you were first, but they decided to sell to someone else, or were you just the first to say "PM'd" in the sales thread? Often times sellers post their watches to several boards at the same time. If the seller didn't come out and tell you, it's possible you weren't really first. Obviously, it's also possible the seller just didn't want to sell to you.

The one good thing that came out of this is hopefully the watch you did want was described well enough that you can find another one. Not only can you continue to watch the M2M sales board, but you can also post WTB requests on all the rep boards to see if someone else has one. As I said earlier, it's great that you are doing research. A lot of people don't do that when looking to build frankens and it gets them in trouble because they buy the wrong thing, or can't tell when a seller has added some "fluff" to their descriptions.

I will close with you are going to have to get over the whole "everyone should take a loss" mentality when it comes to franken builds. Buying an off the shelf rep (assuming it's still available retail), wearing it for a few months and listing it for the same price as you bought it probably won't get you a quick sale. Listing a franken with a bunch of parts that are incredibly difficult (if not impossible) to find is a completely different animal. For example, in your $891 'mythical' listing, the seller might actually be pricing well if they bought parts 2 years ago when they were much cheaper. I have a DateJust franken that could not be duplicated now for $250-$300 more than I have invested. The case, dial, bezel and movement prices have gone up substantially since I bought them. If I priced it at just what I have into it, someone would still be getting a great deal, and I could probably part it out for more than selling the watch as a whole. I'm not saying every franken is that way, but you can't just paint them all with one brush.