There Are Pandas, and Then There Are Pandas.
And this isn't either of them! The Pandas we're talking about here, are watches, not bears. And what got me thinking about them (again) was a link posted this morning by @cm.rook who pointed a few of us to the very attractive (and not terribly priced) Yema "Rallygraph" Panda which, in it's most traditional arrangement, looks like the one on the left, but can also be had in the version on the right: The model on the left is a true Panda, while the model on the right is called a reverse Panda. The reason for that distinction is clear--Panda bears, only come in the first arrangement. Now at this point, everyone should be thinking about the most well-know Panda, The Rolex Panda, which is actually a Daytona, and among Rolex Daytonas, the most famous of which is the Paul Newman Daytona, which was famous first, because it was Paul's, and second because it sold at auction for $17.8 million (US Dollars). The story of that auction is well-known so I'll only...
Nov 8, 2019
These kinds of offical gradings are heavily influenced by industry pressures.
I bought a leather watch strap the other day off of Amazon. The strap was a thick strap with Panerai-style buckle. Everything about it is fine, except the texture of the leather is really weird, and not very leather like. Had I been scammed and given pleather or some other fake leather product?
The back of the strap was stamped "Genuine Leather." That's good, right? Turns out, no. Here's what I've learned since about leather.
o "Full-grain leather" is the good stuff.
o "Top-grain leather" has the top split off and is sanded and stamped with a new fake leather texture or is painted with a texture.
o "Genuine leather," what I bought, is the plywood of leather. The odds and ends of the lower layers of leather are glued together in a Nutraloaf fashion and bonded into a sheet which is sanded down to be smooth. The texture may be suede-like. If it's not suede-like, that's even worse, since some sort of additional processing was involved. This stuff is never going to look good nor age well.
A similar situation obtains with carbon fiber watch cases. Real carbon fiber is formed from sheets of carbon fiber fabric molded into plastic. But in general, carbon fiber watch cases contain powderized carbon fiber mixed into plastic. This weakens the plastic rather than strengthening it, but it allows for the marketing department to call the plastic "carbon fiber."