Saw one of these watches for sale on WUS earlier and ended up poking around his website

http://www.gregstevens-design.com/

Looks like he makes some good quality straps (amongst other unrelated nice leather bits) alongside the watch project.

To the few who are Panerai fans... just got my 212 back from servicing (the bill is a little tilting). Looks absolutely brand new. Threw it on a new strap for kicks.

Looks nice. You sent it into Panerai for service? After seeing some of the official Omega service center invoices, I'm sure you got raped. Enjoy!

On the other hand, with a complication like a flyback, I probably wouldn't just send it to any yahoo either.

I actually went through the NYC Boutique rather than send to the service center directly. I wanted to have a sales-repish type person to face off with and it worked out very well. I'm not sure if I paid a premium to do that, I would think not, but if I did I think it may have been minor and well worth it.

Servicing on this piece was north of $600. Yowsa.

Oh $600 seems pretty decent compared to some of the Rolex and Omega prices I've seen.

I think my Rolo (sub) last year was about $600 but also included a new crystal.

Beautiful watch though. Thanks for the pic.

You guys think $600 is bad? Go get a Patek serviced

http://www.patek.com/contents/default/en/costs.html

oh, not even close to bad at all, kind of cool really

That really is a nice PAM, if I were ever to do a pam chrono, I think that would be the one. I don't know what it is about the 1950 case that's different from the Luminor, but I like it.



I tried on a 351 and fell in love.

What makes the Panerai so expensive??

May not be caught well in the photos but one of the best grabs of the 212 is the domed crystal. Seems like now they reserve it for limited edition pieces mostly, so it's off some of their more mainstream models, and they revamped the 212 in to another model (can't remember which) that lost the dome crystal and the tach components. I personally like the 212 better (dome crystal is the nuts) and what I especially like about it as it somewhat hides the tach detail due to the curvature so it doesn't look as noisy as it normally could (in my opinion). Lastly, I think the 212 is some Valjoux movement and the new version is the Panerai movement, so take that for what it's worth (if I recall the details).

I love the 212.. my stable of PAMs include the 000, 212 and 321. All awesome for different reasons.

-trp

I thought all 1950s had a domed crystal, sort of a fiddy trademark?

Hodinkee Early Review

Sexy watch.

Great looking watch, even though its really busy. JLC in-house chrono movement for 10k seems like a good deal.