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What sub did you have? The sub copies are getting insanely good. I quite like the hobby aspect of the replica scene. Crazy guys doing franken watches with real rolley parts just for their own fun.
jv-
I got a Noob v7 no date ceramic, which was very very close. The only thing I noticed as an obvious tell was the bezel numbers, which are filled with a white metal on the originals, and they're just regular steel on the Noob.
I also like that side of it. It reminds me of nothing more than the homebrew software scene back in the 80s, people taking the originals, taking inspiration from them, and seeing what they can do with those designs. I think as long as no-one's sellign them as originals they're interesting enough in terms of the culture of horology to justify their own existence.
I might be extending it out a bit too much here but back in the 17th and 18th centuries when clockwork was just being worked out, there was apparently a lot of this sort of stuff. Some clockmakers would be super secretive about their technologies but once they released the clocks, other clockmakers could buy them, half inch the designs, then put them in their own clocks. Homebrew!
ReekBlefs
I picked up an excellent rolex submariner copy, which I sold on after a few months (wasn't for me, though I did enjoy wearing it from time to time) and a pretty good but not excellent vintage SM300 vintage copy. I still wear that. You'd never think it was real, and I'd never try to pass it off as real - it's just an old school classic diver with a decent movement, of a kind I'll never be able to buy in real life.