James,

I wanted to man up and extend a sincere apology for my "attack" yesterday.

Welcome to the forum, and I hope to see your participation more!

I had presumed that you were another "scammer" because we have had an uptick of guys showing up and attempting to "pump" up a watch for sale. The email address also looked questionable, since many of the "scammers" were also using hotmail and outlook email addresses. I actually appreciate the fact that you wrote back, and want to have a genuine discussion about this Monaco.

I appreciate the "full story", and am very interested in learning more. The part that really puts doubt in my head with this piece is:

1) The serial was stated as 262265 on Antiquorum, which you suggested was a possible typo. This would be a huge typo.

2) Even with the serial being 162265, this would still not make any sense to me. The earliest 1133G had serials of 157xxx. I would think that a prototype would have a serial number that would be earlier than the 157xxx, unless this was a prototype for a completely new model that never made it.

Prototypes in general are not easy items to "sell", unless you have the ability to prove the authenticity of them. This is the big challenge. I personally would not be gambling 15k GBP (or remotely close to that) to guess if this piece was authentic or not. The seller needs to do more homework, and send the watch to several experts, in order to determine and help the credibility of this watch. They will need to invest time and money, if they want to achieve the highest bid for a piece that so far has very little to go by.

Cheers
Carlo

I have read many posts in the back

: I think you maybe presume to much... You really think the people
: trying to sell this Monaco are scammers? Have you seen their
: eBay feedback and items they sell???

: The hotmail address is my genuine email I've had for years.

: I merely posted that link as the original post questioned where the
: picture was on OTD.

: I have viewed this Monaco when buying a Silverstone from this
: seller and they even showed me the emails they had from Ralf
: suggesting he thought it was a genuine dial when he owned it and
: also from a specialist in Germany that had been sent enlarged
: dial shots before concluding it was a test dial.

: These are definitely not scammers as you so hastily put it but from
: what they told me they are pitching it at a level incase it
: might be rare whilst they gain all the facts.

: Maybe you should enlighten us as to why it is fake...