A7750 and the life expectance of reps in general

[YoloWatchLover 0]

Hello everyone!

Introductions (skip the next paragraph if you want to stay in topic lol :D)

Let me start with introducing myself. Im a 30-year-old watch lover from Finland and currently hunting for a quality rep. I own some gen watches and probably could afford to continue buying them gen but have recently built a great intrest towards high quality reps. It all started when my watchsmith explained to me in a bit more detail how modern reps are getting better and better every day! I love my watches dont get me wrong but I also tend to get bored with them and start looking for new "lovers" every year or so. I think it's also worth mentioning that before this post I've been diving through the massive amounts of high quality information here for about 10 hours in the past few days. But enough of this and lets get to the topic!

My concern is about the life expectance of the movements inside the high quality reps. I've red some great stickies about the expectations one should have for the reps in general and if I remember correctly getting a year or two without maintenance is generally considered very good for a rep - especially for a A7750. Is there anyway I can make sure I can enjoy my rep for longer? Some posts also mentioned that the movements themselves are quite good but they have been put together in such a hurry that usually they are not well oiled and might be dirty or even rusty! -Do people straight away when they get the watch put them through some sort of light maintenance (oiling and cleaning etc.?) Can you do it yourself or do you need a educated professional to do it?

Dropping 300+$ on a rep watch seems reasonable but I'd rather not see it fail in it's first year. Some ppl also wrote that the quality of the movements is also increasing all the time. Are my assumptions mentioned earlier based on a alrdy outdated information? Do the modern versions come with a more realible movements?

For my first rep I'm thinking about staying with the super reps or NWBIGs (a very useful post in the RWI clubroom!!!) and many of the watches Im intrested in are using the notorious A7750. The Tag Heuer Carrera Calibre 1887 SS with black ceramic bezel is my current favourite!

Edited December 25, 2017 by YoloWatchLover

[greg_r 81]

I have several reps that are over 10 years old and still going strong (the oldest of them is almost twice that age).

I don’t generally buy a7750s, however.

Stick to the eta clones or miyota and a rep can last as long as any mechanical watch - just get ‘em serviced when they need it.

[GingerApple 7,285]

They certainly fail more than gens do, but what do you expect for the money. I've never seen one as bad inside as you describe though, all rusty etc. They're certainly not as pristinely dust free as Gen and it only takes the smallest spec of dust or a hair or something to cause havoc with the movement, so being able to clean movements etc is a useful skill. For me that's another attraction of Reps; they're cheap enough that you can start to play around with them yourself, learn how to do basic servicing etc. But if that's not for you, there are watchmakers on the forum that can help you out for approx $100.

I think you should mentally factor in repair/service costs when you buy a rep. Sometimes they turn up DOA (which can often be due to shipping damage) so they might need that service immediately, but equally, many members have had reps that have lasted years. Any watch will need servicing at some point, parts wear out of course, but overall, I think these movements are  pretty decent.

[YoloWatchLover 0]

Thank you for the great insights!

I'll try to look around for some models that do not use the A7750 but Im afraid my waking autism will force me to choose a model with too many moving parts!