I have been away from the rep game for a couple of years and I come back to find Noob has cloned the 4130 and has made what, IMO, looks like a gorgeous Daytona rep. The fact that, by all accounts, the cloned movement is actually reliable is pretty damn astonishing!!! When I was really into buying rep watches (I was very addicted for a few years), if you wanted a super clone/franken daytona, you'd need to find one from someone like Phong that could fabricate a case and use a zenith movement to clone 16520 and it would cost you close $5,000.00 (and believe me, it was not a perfect copy). For those guys out there complaining that this rep Daytona with a reliable clone 4130 is somehow overpriced at $700, you're out of your minds. That's a steal!!! I a not saying it's not expensive ($700 is a lot of money), but it's a great deal for what you're getting.
With all that said, there is a big downside to a watch like this.... it has a clone 4130 movement! It cost a f---king fortune to have a gen 4130 serviced is going to cost you at least $500 (and likely more) from any decent local watch smith (and some of them won't even touch a 4130). It's not like working on a 2824 or even a 7750. The movement is a lot more sophisticated. That price, btw, is based on the assumption that all you need is a service and no replacement parts. If you need a replacement part, it's not like you could easily source it like you could for an ETA movement. Hopefully, the movement will accept gen Rolex parts; however, those parts don't come cheap--especially for a 4130. I am not saying people shouldn't by this watch (hell no, I am thinking of getting one myself as my first new rep in 3 years), but go into this with your eyes wide open. As good as a rep might be, there are always potential QC issues that get by the makers. If you're unlucky enough to get a wonky movement, ouch!!!!
As for investing in frankening this watch, it's not for me to tell anyone how to spend his money. I have frankened a bunch of watches in the past, including a Breitling BCE, Rolex Sea Dweller and AP Safari. I still have them all and enjoy the heck out of them. At the same time, in my quest for perfection, I ended up dumping more and more money into each watch (it was a little OCD of me). Looking back now, I am not sure it was worth the investment (maybe the Breitling, since the only thing rep on it at this point is the bracelet!---but buying the gen wouldn't have cost much more). The little nits like slight differences in font size and engraving depth would go without notice by 99% of the world--including serious watch enthusiasts. I still wear an old school noob daytona two tone, white dial with a 7750 movement. The case is thicker than my gen Tudor Tiger case, but I still enjoy it. No one would ever look and think it's a fake--and the flaws on that go much deeper than a little issue with the font on the dial. Oh, and FYI, if you look at Rolex Daytonas, Subs etc. from different production years and runs, you'll find differences in engravings, dial fonts and spacing etc. This happens when they change out the tooling on a engraving machine and the engravings on the bezels are a little deeper in the subsequent batch. Same goes with dials depending on how they are being printed and supplies etc. These aren't differences that a normal person would ever notice, but if you're going to blow up and compare pictures on a 65" screen you can see variations in the gens from year to year. So, you can't say that the font is off or the engravings are off just based off of a picture of a gen you find on the net. You need a lot of samples from watches over the production run to see where Noob is making their copies from. Of course there will be flaws (it's a f--king copy after all), but they probably not as bad as some might think and may not be worth investing another $1000 or more to put on a gen bracelet, dial, hands, crystal, bezel etc. I would recommend saving your money for when the watch needs a service, putting in towards a nice strap or buying another rep for your collection.
