Hi Guys

I built an SM300 for myself (a la Watchco) at the start of this year and a friend pushed me to build him one in the same way (although he may no longer be in a position to take it, another story). I get parts from Cousins in the UK and when I put his dial on something seemed a little different to mine. The marker colour is whiter so, I performed a test of the luminosity. It seems the new one has very little effectiveness and looks strange with the very bright hands. I think it is just very old stock.

I can return this dial as I can't leave it on the new watch but was wondering if it might find a better use with someone who has an original SM300 with a damaged dial and doesn't want the super bright modern lume. If so, I can put it in the for sale forum with better pictures. What do you think?

The running one in the left is mine.






Cheers, Chris

 

I have done three Watchco type builds and they all have the lume like the one on the left. I sourced all my parts from Watchco themselves. Maybe a bad batch of dials? For what Cousins charges I would return it. Not sure anyone wants a less than perfect 300 dial.

 

I made a Cousins SM300 and got the parts 28/11 2014 and the dial lumen is great. I can see the price has raised apr. 30 % since november....

 

The prices went up from late November to early December by over $300 US.

 

Due to lack of parts, or demand or ??

Happy i got the "cheap" parts, i think i its almost 240-250£ more now for case, dial and hands.

 

Most likely supply. I hate to think they are taking advantage of demand.

 

But the new 300 does not use this case. Are you saying they increased the price because the new 300 is popular?

 

Hey Chris - if the photo of the dial packaging is for the one that has the dim lume, then it's not very old. The production date is on the package - 49.10, so the 49th week of 2010. So just a defective dial, and should be sent back for exchange IMO.

Cheers, Al

 

Thanks for all the response. Yes, it just seems to be defective as at 4 years old you would expect the lume to be perfect. Will try for an exchange as I don't want to pay the new price and it's no good to me.

Have just looked and paid £634 for the case and £117 for the dial. Both plus 20% VAT. So, just over £900 inc VAT (plus hands etc). The new prices are £824 + £152 plus VAT so, £1170 or 30% higher. Have Omega raised their prices?

Nice watch TDN! I wear mine a fair amount and it has fast become a favourite.

Cheers, Chris.

 

It seems cousins have put their prices up on a lot of items just in the last few weeks

 

Better get them while we can, Omega supposedly changing their distribution of parts soon. Glad I got my 300 built when i did.

 

The last price increase (of 10%) that I saw was earlier this year, maybe April or May but I'm not sure. Usually Omega raises their prices in the March time frame each year, but this past year it was a little later.

Of course 3rd party resellers like Cousins, Otto Frei, and any other material supplier that currently sells parts can charge whatever they want.

Certainly choices will be more limited for these builds in the future.

Cheers, Al

 

Hmmm, so they may be making hay while the sun shines. Can't blame them for that and at the moment they offer a service that no-one else does. At least for a further year.

I suppose I have the option to invest five years and 100,000 (?) in training and kit and then I might get a parts account. That does bring it into perspective for me as unfortunately, five years is too big a proportion of what I have left

Chris

 

I don't think it a case of caning the Omega parts prices. Cousins put up a lot of their prices a couple of months ago. I suspect a lot of it has to do with catching up on exchange rates. I know the £ has gained a bit over the past few months but many of their prices hadn't risen to match the old exchange rates so they may well have been operating on reduced margins for some time. As the economy recovers, it makes sense for them to raise their prices.

 

30% seems steep for catching up on exchange rates....

 

That's about the amount the £ dropped at its worst against the € during the recession.

 

Ouch!

 

Perhaps backing up what Stewart says, they may have been artificially low and they are realigning their prices. The case price including Eurpean VAT is the same price as on Ofrei without sales tax (I never remember how to his works in USA). If you imported this to Europe there would be an additional 20%+ to pay.

http://www.ofrei.com/page1184.html#17457

 

Just an FYI (back to the original thread title) and with no disrespect to the OP (GLWS if you sell it) ... Ofrei has the SM300 date (166.024) dials available on their web site. The non-date SM300 have been out-of-stock for a while.

-ez