it's a Raffles. I am a cheapo guy
I have to say, even side by side with gen and the "better" rep dials, Raffles holds its own and compares favorably...and when you factor in price, it's a no-brainer. Especially on something like a vintage Explorer or Sub, which has seen hundreds of minor variations over its production run, it's amazingly accurate. One could have an entire watch collection of nothing but Explorers and probably have more watches than most collectors.
The best thing about them is they're a great starting point to modify (or to learn to modify). I can't really see the value added in getting a "better" dial, personally, although I have done so, I admit.
Spending 3-20 (or more) times as much only gets you about a 10% improvement, and it's an improvement that you can generally replicate with some aging using cheap, simple to use materials. Hell, even going from Raffles to gen is not visibly a huge difference, unless the one examining the watch is a savant with a loupe and a stack of reference materials handy. And you could probably get a beater gen Explorer for what some gen 1016 dials are selling for, lol.
If you're trying to exactly match the sunburst on a Patek or AP dial for a specific model, you might get better value going with a higher end rep. If you're trying to make a vintage Rolex look like something that was used (and sometimes abused) for 50-75 years, Raffles and Cartel are very hard to beat.
Precisely matching the dial on a 126610, for example, is harder to do...the dials are more complicated and there are very few deviations from the norm...any inaccuracies are immediately obvious. Matching the dial on a 5513 or 1016, on the other hand, which have seen different dial textures, fonts, colors, layouts, hands, cases, and has genuine examples that range from "looks like it just came from the AD yesterday" to "looks like someone found it scuba diving in a salt marsh, after being serviced by the local clock shop and parts replaced with whatever was handy" gives a lot of wiggle room. Heck, many collectors can't even decide if the Explorer Date was actually made at the factory, or a limited run of aftermarket dials for a specific retailer. Or if the Commando was sold at Abercrombie and Fitch...or military bases...or both...or neither... For a time, the Space Dweller arguably didn't exist...until it did.
You could mix and match almost any case and Explorer dial that Raffles offers, and it would probably match SOMETHING that was once sold at a Rolex dealer, at some point, over the last 70 years, lol.
