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"The "Wrapped" Gold Sub Guide"
- Thread starter Parabuteo
- Start date
LOL! This thread is taking on a life of it's own...I am in also if you want to order a link from Toro and have it tested...let me know.
Noob link is in transit to @andrei01 but it could be a few weeks...he's in Romania. Will be interesting to see what exact metal it is.
Also, here is a pic @occb2 posted of a WM9 TT bracelet next to a gen (gen on top) ...take a look at the color and make your own determination. I have also heard that even the WM9's were just copper wrappings with a very thick gold plating on top...meant to mimic "solid" gold wrap. Just hearsay and cannot confirm this but seems a reasonable surmise...it is nice to finally get the ball rolling though and try to get to the bottom of what these wrapped gold claims really mean.
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- 7/8/16
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Just out of curiosity, did you weigh the wrapping and the remaing stainless on the center link ?
Am curious to see how much does the 'gold' weighs on a wrapped bracelet.
Might it be possible that the total value of the wrapping exceeds the value of the watch itself ?
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The stainless part of the link inside the wrapping weighed 2.12 g, the wrapping weighed .6 g. Total 2.18 g . There might be some tiny part of that lost to the fact I dremeled the link apart at one end, I would say though the entire intact link would weigh around 2.20-2.25 g.
I had a 18k pendant laying around that was close in size to the wrap that I removed, it weighed in at 1.3 g. Let's round that down to 1g of "18k gold" per link, times 14.5 total links including SEL's on a normal Sub band... and even leaving out the case, bezel, and clasp (which are onstesiably wrapped also) if it were really gold it would be $458 worth (as I write this) at 18k spot.
So it seems it would not be impossible for the factory to make a profit even if they used actual 18k gold to wrap the watch, since they are charging a grand or more for these reps. Jury is out as to if that is what they are actually doing though....with Noob at least seems not!
I don't want any $ sent my way LOL. @Versaceboy54 got this ball rollin' so he should head it up...I will send the last $10 to him or @andrei01 whoever he decides should collect the $.....
- 10/6/14
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This is great stuff. I wonder what WM9 is? I was posting pics the other night of one comparing to my real 93253 and man is it light. I always thought it was a good band. I just got a "Sean" wrapped band. I cut a link to see it when I got it. I didn't acid test it. I just ordered the acid test and will do it ASAP when I get them in.
The wrapped BP 116713 is much more expensive than the noob 116713... Maybe that's an indication of the materials used?
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Lol I mean I don't mind collecting the money but I just thought it would be easiest to have someone who already has access to the testing stuff to do it?
This way the link could be shipped directly to them from the TD then out for testing as that would be the quickest and most direct way.
For me to do it, I would 1st need to find a place locally that is able to do these kinds of tests and more importantly I would need to see if Toro is even willing to sell me a link as I've never done business with him before so I have no prior relationship with him.
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This way the link could be shipped directly to them from the TD then out for testing as that would be the quickest and most direct way.
For me to do it, I would 1st need to find a place locally that is able to do these kinds of tests and more importantly I would need to see if Toro is even willing to sell me a link as I've never done business with him before so I have no prior relationship with him.
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We won't know for sure until the testing is done on the BP but one of the main differences in price is that on the Noob the top is only "wrapped" so there is bare steel showing on the sides whereas on the BP the whole link is "wrapped" in gold.
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Awesome! If you happen to have a BP in there, wrapped, and are willing to let it go reasonably-PM me and we will do a M2M sale thread, I will do the same simple acid test I did on the Noob, and also possibly send it on to @andrei01 to be tested if he is willing, but not until he receives the Noob I sent him and we see exactly what that is first.
If a BP link has no gold in it I guess we can put this to bed and assume all modern wrapping is "replica" gold rather than the real McCoy.
I know this is thread about subs, but has anyone done this for daydates or datejust? Would it be safe to assume that all wrapping from a particular factory would be the same on any watch they produced? I've seen tests for the wrapped PP Nautilus that said it was 75% gold.
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I have seen TD sites that say that the subs are also. I have a guy here message me and was told that the DD rep was a Yuki and 80% all 18K gold. The watch was $1000 dollars. I explained to him nicely, that he would have too be a fool to believe that Yuki put out a day date and to think about how much gold a 80% 18K would be way over an ounce of gold and that do the math on the price of gold.
Unfortunately no BP link. These are all more than 10 years old..VM9, TWBest etc. I was thinking that if someone want to compare the oldschool reps to these new ones. I can send a link for free
I have to disagree. I think that $1,000 on top of the price of a non-wrapped version is plenty to pay for a 20-30 micron gold wrap (pretty standard spec on most TD sites) and still leave ample room for profit for the factory. That's really not much gold. Just enough to give it the look of solid gold.
This statement wasn't saying that the whole watch was solid 75% gold. It was saying that the gold wrap was 75% gold, which is the exact amount of gold in 18k gold.
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The Jury is still out...but at least to me it's looking pretty grim that any other than possibly older TW best etc DD's have any measurable gold content. I would LOVE to be wrong...this thread is not about debunking, it's about education and finding out the truth about "wrapping".
More than one past post has said TW best DD's acid tested positive for gold. I am not sure how thick the coating on something has to be to leave enough gold residue on a testing stone to test positive.