Hi,
Most plated watches always generally had a base metal of brass with nickel or gold plating. I'm pretty sure your carrera in question must be brass with gold plating. The process of replating would require a complete diss-assembly, repolishinus/ brushing of the case and then gold plating it to a 20 micron thickness. The cost of polishing and refinishing the case is separate to the plating. If you could provide us with some pictures, then maybe we could advise you better for our against it.

I hope this helps you in some way.

: Pardon my ignorance on this issue. I have the chance to buy a
: Carrera 73655 ; everything is fine except the gold-plating,
: which is worn. It's on sale many miles from me, so I can't
: examine it before purchase. I know from the forum that its
: reference number 73655 is correct for a Carrera with 20 microns
: gold-plating, but what is the underlying metal? The Carrera
: section of the Master Reference Table says "the cases being
: either stainless steel, gold-plated or 18 karat gold" ,
: which implies that the gold-plated ones are NOT stainless steel
: ; but it doesn't say what's underneath the gold-plated ones.

: If it is steel, that should polish back to a nice clean case at
: fairly low cost ; but if it is brass, or some other base metal,
: I would need to find someone who can strip and replate it, which
: would be pretty costly.

: BOB