I felt it more than necessary to relay to the membership what many of you already know- what a true artist, artisan, and gentleman @tripdog is to do business with.
After having a 6238 slip through my fingers on a M2M sale- I decided to reach out to Tripdog for a build of my own. I live in CONUS and have never had any interaction with him online- but as a moderator and well-regarded modder on this site he is hard to miss. I simply sent him a link to the lost sale and asked him if he felt up to building one for me. he answered very quickly with a lot of detailed information about different avenues we could take to make it happen. On his instruction, I purchased a base watch from a TD and had it shipped directly to him in the EU. I sent him some additional funds to purchase hands/dial/etc. that he was able to source a little cheaper than what I could purchase it for. The base watch arrived in his hands about two weeks later.
With his popularity I had no idea how long it would take him to do the work- he needed to significantly modify the case shape before installing dial/hands etc. I was assuming a month? Perhaps two? I did not want to ask because I wanted him to take his time. He received the base watch in the second week of February- I was going to leave him alone until the end of March before asking how we were progressing. To my great surprise, he was ready to send it about two weeks later. he sent pictures and details about exactly what he did- including some on-the-fly modifications and additions he felt necessary. the pics are included below.
I have purchased over a dozen watches in M2M coming from the EU/UK. It has always taken about 2+ weeks from posting to delivery. I don't know if Tripdog has some sort of private rep watch courier service ferrying watches across the Atlantic- but it was here in about 10 days. The results of his work are even better than I expected.- and I had high expectations.
I know I am going to get a lot of PMs asking about pricing- but I don't think it is fair to Tripdog to give an exact price. As mentioned above- he made some on-the-fly modifications to the plan to give me the best watch he could give me. As we all know these rep watches and their components vary in quality from batch to batch- and he made the appropriate choices to maximize my results for a very reasonable sum. To give you a broad idea- I spent about the cost of buying two VSF watches from a TD on this one fantastic rare timepiece. he felt the crystal was suboptimal so he replaced it. There were some missing gaskets on the pushers and the case back so he sourced and installed them. He made the decision to go with the red second hand which is true to some gen models- I think it is a great improvement over the black hand seen on the original watch that started my journey.
I am already thinking about the next build I will ask him to do- I cannot recommend his thorough communication, his skill, and his eye for detail highly enough. I would say to those considering asking him to do something similar- I would allow him to use his knowledge and artistic license to build something without you the customer getting bogged down in the details. If you are the kind of person that is going to get bent out of shape because he spent an extra 40 Euros to make some changes to make the watch better- this corner of the rep world may not be for you. But if you want something well-made, unique, and thoughtfully designed and built- I cannot recommend him enough.
I hope this helps.
After having a 6238 slip through my fingers on a M2M sale- I decided to reach out to Tripdog for a build of my own. I live in CONUS and have never had any interaction with him online- but as a moderator and well-regarded modder on this site he is hard to miss. I simply sent him a link to the lost sale and asked him if he felt up to building one for me. he answered very quickly with a lot of detailed information about different avenues we could take to make it happen. On his instruction, I purchased a base watch from a TD and had it shipped directly to him in the EU. I sent him some additional funds to purchase hands/dial/etc. that he was able to source a little cheaper than what I could purchase it for. The base watch arrived in his hands about two weeks later.
With his popularity I had no idea how long it would take him to do the work- he needed to significantly modify the case shape before installing dial/hands etc. I was assuming a month? Perhaps two? I did not want to ask because I wanted him to take his time. He received the base watch in the second week of February- I was going to leave him alone until the end of March before asking how we were progressing. To my great surprise, he was ready to send it about two weeks later. he sent pictures and details about exactly what he did- including some on-the-fly modifications and additions he felt necessary. the pics are included below.
I have purchased over a dozen watches in M2M coming from the EU/UK. It has always taken about 2+ weeks from posting to delivery. I don't know if Tripdog has some sort of private rep watch courier service ferrying watches across the Atlantic- but it was here in about 10 days. The results of his work are even better than I expected.- and I had high expectations.
I know I am going to get a lot of PMs asking about pricing- but I don't think it is fair to Tripdog to give an exact price. As mentioned above- he made some on-the-fly modifications to the plan to give me the best watch he could give me. As we all know these rep watches and their components vary in quality from batch to batch- and he made the appropriate choices to maximize my results for a very reasonable sum. To give you a broad idea- I spent about the cost of buying two VSF watches from a TD on this one fantastic rare timepiece. he felt the crystal was suboptimal so he replaced it. There were some missing gaskets on the pushers and the case back so he sourced and installed them. He made the decision to go with the red second hand which is true to some gen models- I think it is a great improvement over the black hand seen on the original watch that started my journey.
I am already thinking about the next build I will ask him to do- I cannot recommend his thorough communication, his skill, and his eye for detail highly enough. I would say to those considering asking him to do something similar- I would allow him to use his knowledge and artistic license to build something without you the customer getting bogged down in the details. If you are the kind of person that is going to get bent out of shape because he spent an extra 40 Euros to make some changes to make the watch better- this corner of the rep world may not be for you. But if you want something well-made, unique, and thoughtfully designed and built- I cannot recommend him enough.
I hope this helps.
