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| Joined: | Sun Jul 13th, 2008 |
| Location: | Charlotte, NC, USA |
| Posts: | 95 |
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There are slight differences in the 214 movements, mostly cosmetic, like gold filled.
Unfortunately I found out that a lot of these "Spaceview" watches are faked. There a few sellers on ebay that I researched who buy old 214 watches and convert them to Spaceviews and sell them as such. The one I questioned about one of his items for sale, asking him if was indeed a real Spaceview as he had advertised, he replied that how could I think it was a Spaceview given the price he was asking. Basically if you remove the dial and change the hands and crystal, they are for the most part identical. However this seller used three different accounts to buy and sell watches and I saw many examples of him buying regular 214's then a week later selling it as a "Spaceview" The serial numbers were clearly shown in the old watch he bought and then selling it later as a "Spaceview". All the parts are readily available to convert these watches and there are no known breakdowns of serial numbers to verify a Spaceview. So its difficult to verify an authentic Spaceview to justify the price.
That price listed for the watch above seems a bit steep IMO.
After all my research I decided on a 218 model Railroad Edition.
Very hard to fake as the second hand is red and there is a hacking system for the second hand, where in the regular 218 that didn't excist.
Also the 214's are known to run a little fast with the new style non-mercury battery. The lithium is 1.5v where the mercury was 1.35v IIRC. There are a few repair shops that will modify the electronics in the 214 to better run on the lithium batteries.
Apparently the 218's deal with the newer batteries much better and have less issues. Mine keeps very good time and hums alongs.
Last edited on Wed Dec 17th, 2008 12:00 pm by DannyOcean