How I found Panerai
Gents,
I am pleasantly amazed that there is a forum in which collectors of reps openly discuss the rep industry! Story of how I found out about Panerai brand and am now a fanatic of rep PAMs:
My boss owns a large gen high-end watch collection, wears different brands of watches, and when I first saw him wear a PAM089, I was flabergasted at the style and size of the watch. As an owner of a gen Breitling Super Avenger (48mm on SS bracelet), I was surprised that there was another watch produced that came close to matching the size of my Breitling. [I purchased the BSA after a co-worker introduced me to the Breitling brand.]
Immediately, I started researching the prices and locations at which PAMs were sold. After realizing the wife would NEVER let me purchase another 3k+ watch, I resigned myself to buying a rep. My job sent me to Thailand for a week, and I found what I thought was the best-looking rep (turns out it is a fantasy PAM resembling a PAM111 with blue face) for $60USD. I wore it with pride everyday for about 6 months.
Then, I started gaining courage to ask the wife for permission to own a gen PAM after I had nicked the face of the rep I had been wearing. The wife said "OK", and I was prepared to go on a quest to find the perfect gen PAM. The I discovered ioffer.com and Andy (or Andrew as the rest of you guys call him here). As a skeptical person, I only shelled out $150USD for a PAM164, a week later, it arrived, and I fell in love all over again. [I've never worn the fantasy PAM from Thailand since!]
That was 3 months ago.
Since then, I've bought 6 other rep PAMs (111, 112, 113, 196, 217, and 029) from Andy, all of which have been great. In addition to finding out about Andy, I discovered Panatime.com, and have added a considerable amount of straps to my PAM collection, also.
After all of this, I have a few comments and questions:
My dad, father-in-law, and step father-in-law have all admired my PAMs, and I purchased one for each of them as a gift. Obviously they all know the watches are reps, and they aren't into watches, much less Panerai, but this goes to show that "common folk" are really fascinated by this brand.
After purchasing a total of 7 rep PAMs, I'm totally shocked that I spent about half of what only ONE gen 0000 would cost. Do other collectors feel this good about owning several reps and not even spending a fraction of what one gen would cost?
After perusing previous posts, I've not seen one mention of the PAM164, which is my favorite because it has the numerals around the dial. Am I the only collector who likes this model, or do most rep collectors like collecting only manual-wind versions?
How long should I expect the Asian Unitas watches to last? I've read that for long-term wear, one should purchase Swiss reps, but I've purchased the less expensive Asian movements. Should I expect to purchase new reps every year if I have the Asian components?
Last comment: Since having discovered the Panerai brand and the reps (starting with the first one in Thailand), I have worn my gen BSA for only about 10 minutes. And that was to shake it once a month to make sure it still worked!
MattUSSS
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PAMs are certainly very addictive....sooo when are you going to get a 177? lol 
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