P220 Smudge

Another brand worth looking at is Zelos. They are a Singapore based brand and tend to me more expensive but you can probably find a model or two with a Seiko auto movement close to your price range. The founder of the company stands behind his products 100% and has arguably THE best customer service in the biz. When my Zelos broke I emailed him and had a shipping label the next day. Elshan Tang (founder of Zelos) is just awesome and worth a mention.


Between Seiko and Phoibos it’s a coin flip. Seiko’s QC is hit or miss lately when it comes to accuracy, bezel action and chapter ring alignment. I’ve had better luck lately with the smaller micro brands that use Seiko movements.

It’s a shame they are so hard to get but a Helm watch would be good too. They are damn near impossible to get at times though. It took me 7 months to get my Vanuatu. It was totally worth the wait.

Now that I think about it I paid about $200 for my first Seiko Turtle. I picked up a used PADI Turtle off the fleabay and it turned out to be a gem of a watch. It has a few dings and it came with a NATO but it is arguably one of the best watch purchases I ever made.

I figured if I bought a used example with a few dings it was more likely to be real since someone wore and enjoyed it for a bit. There are LOTS of fake Seiko’s on the fleabay unfortunately. I took my PADI Turtle to the Caribbean and Florida and when I got back two weeks later it was only +5 seconds from atomic time!

Even though those Seiko automatic movements are considered throw away movements because of how cheap they are to replace it doesn’t mean they cannot be regulated to wonderful levels of accuracy.

Phoibos = Phoebus - the name usually associated with Apollo and the more usual spelling.

Think 'Zoos' in stead of 'Zeus'.

Thanks for the input, Stickman, I appreciate it.

I'll look into Zelos. The first I'd heard of them was in esdunbar's ad in the classifieds. Speaking of which, his prices on those watches are very good. If the Proteus was the blue or white dial version, I would have already jumped on it.

P220 Smudge your bumping of this thread back to the top was VERY good timing! Phoibos just released a new watch, the Voyager and it’s price is spectacular! It’s also pretty good looking in my opinion.

I noticed the last time Phoibos released a watch that the name of the watch knocked off some of the price when it first launched. The same thing works for this new watch! $269 is the list price but you can get 15% off with the code “Voyager”. $229 Shipped for a neat Seiko Automatic powered Rolex sub style case with an interesting dial and LOTS of lume? Heck yes. This looks like a great watch and killer deal for the money. Lots of bang for your buck.

I especially like the blue one.

Link to the new Phoibos Voyager

The lumed minute track is pretty darn cool too.

It's styled after the Yachtmaster and I just ordered a blue one!

I was just getting ready to order a Certina watch from Jomashop when I checked this thread.

I'm glad I did. I just ordered the blue dial version.

I've been checking their website every few days. I don't know how I missed the new release.

Thanks for the update.

Gorgeous.

My timing is certainly interesting, that’s for sure! Damn. I do like that blue one and I really like the lume. The Luke’s minute track is a nice feature.

I may very well pull the trigger on that. Thanks for the heads up and coupon code!

It was $228.65 delivered!

I was going to buy one of the remaining Seiko SKX007j in stock at Jomashop, but I REALLY like this.

quote:

Originally posted by Mars_Attacks:
It was $228.65 delivered!

I was going to buy one of the remaining Seiko SKX007j in stock at Jomashop, but I REALLY like this.

With as little as I know about it, I've been watching a ton of videos to try to get up to speed. The guy I've been watching a lot of loves the SKX series but has been complaining about how ridiculous the prices for them have been getting. With that in mind, I think you did pretty well on this one!

Yeah at $228.65 delivered I decided to get one too.

I can’t find a single YouTube review for this watch yet.

Ok. Now to decide which color dial, lol. Pretty much all of them look good to me except the brown. Woof.

- Edit - Yeah, blue was the way to go. Got one on the way. Thanks, Stickman!

They do look like nice watches and a very good price.

Unfortunately HK=PRC I wish that wasn't the case.


I was going to try to find a sweet watch at that price point hard to do. This one is US assembled, Swiss & other parts. A few of you were looking for a blue face, so here is what I remembered seeing the other day. $475, display case back, stainless,

Mcdowell Time Mcdowell time

SOTAR, as someone who spent years in the tidewater region of Virginia I appreciate your post. You cannot begin to imagine how pleasantly surprised I was to see the Tidewater is sporting a fantastic engine, the Sellita SW-200, which can be fine tuned to impressive levels of accuracy. It appears to have nice lume too!



Always display your engine if it is a decent Swiss made high beat automatic.


Behold the SW200. The same movement found in MUCH more expensive divers. Lots of people think it is inferior to the ETA 2824-2 but I have seen some amazing examples. With ETA apparently cracking down on movements going to non Swatch group watch manufacturers I can only see Sellita and Miyota growing and hopefully it innovating to compete against ETA.

Sellita was a sub contractor for ETA for a very long time to supply embauche movements and parts.

STP is Fossil Group's offering into the embauche movement market. Fossil opened a factory just to produce movements for the Zodiac line and now sell them to micro brands.

Has anyone's watch actually shipped yet?

Mine has had Shipping Label Created, USPS Awaiting Item for days now.

It was showing in stock when I ordered from the US warehouse and now it's showing out of stock in the US.

quote:

Originally posted by Mars_Attacks:
Has anyone's watch actually shipped yet?

Mine has had Shipping Label Created, USPS Awaiting Item for days now.

It was showing in stock when I ordered from the US warehouse and now it's showing out of stock in the US.

Mine looks just like yours:

My order shows a label was created, awaiting item on 7/25. There's also an indication on the upper task bar in the tracking site that it's in transit.

My best guess is the watches weren't in the US warehouse when ordered and are actually coming from Hong Kong.