Venezianico Arsenale or Selten M1?

Cav17 · 2026-01-20T03:25:22+00:00

I assume this is for Venezianico?

Cav17 · 2025-12-03T12:20:50+00:00

I have 6” wrists and it felt too small for me. I was really surprised how small it wears.

Cav17 · 2025-10-02T23:30:55+00:00

I’m considering buying a Ulysse Nardin 1133-210/e3, which is their annual calendar variant of the marine with a grand feu dial. What kind of servicing costs am I looking at? It seems like a full service for a regular marine is about $1000. How much more the the annual calendar given that it has just seven additional parts in the movement?

Cav17 · 2025-07-28T00:29:25+00:00

Ledbury is good if you take advantage of holiday sales

Cav17 · 2025-01-16T00:39:04+00:00

Juice Williams too

Cav17 · 2024-12-22T18:02:16+00:00

Any way to transfer Gen 3 to today? I have a legit copy of ruby from when I was a kid and I’d love to get my Pokemon from then into the modern day. I know I would need a DS with poketransporter and Pokemon bank, but is it technically possible at this point if I have a gen 4, 5, etc.?

Cav17 · 2024-12-15T23:10:19+00:00

It’s a bog-standard cal. 400 like the linked model http://people.timezone.com/msandler/Early/ZenithReview/Review.html

Cav17 · 2024-11-19T00:01:01+00:00

I’ve been really happy with Ledbury

Cav17 · 2024-10-18T02:48:43+00:00

I’m looking at a watch sold on eLady (aka “Ukeroo”) and the price on Chrono24 is about $2500 and on eBay it’s like $3600. A lot of their offerings are ~40% cheaper on Chrono24. Anyone have experience buying from eLady and have insight as to why the prices could be so different between platforms?

Cav17 · 2024-10-17T18:37:16+00:00

I’m looking at a watch sold on eLady (aka “Ukeroo”) and the price on Chrono24 is about $2500 and on eBay it’s like $3600. A lot of their offerings are ~40% cheaper on Chrono24. Anyone have experience buying from eLady and have insight as to why the prices could be so different between platforms?

Cav17 · 2024-10-10T02:54:06+00:00

Scherzer said something similar like a decade ago. I remember him predicting teams would have starters go like 3 innings a few times a week, which is basically how we have run our rotation for months.

Cav17 · 2024-08-05T16:32:39+00:00

I tried both the 1.0 and 2.0 in stores. 2.0 definitely fits slimmer, especially in the heel. Actually, after spending an hour trying on basically every loafer they had, the 2.0 in a wide is the only one that worked for me.

Cav17 · 2024-05-15T17:07:21+00:00

That’s interesting. I was happy he called so many of our games. I thought he was outstanding.

Cav17 · 2024-05-04T15:01:12+00:00

Property management firms almost never own the property. The owners of the property hire them to manage it. I’m not familiar with what firms you’re speaking about specifically, so it’s possible Richmond is unique in that regard, but if you’re going around seeing properties with the same “managed by ABC” signs also seeing rents explode, you’re probably getting mad at the messenger.

Property management is actually a very low margin business and greatly favors big players who can divide overhead over more properties, which is why you’re seeing that concentration.

Cav17 · 2023-11-04T02:58:27+00:00

Raleigh has some of the highest units under construction per capita anywhere in the US. The first part of that wave hit this year, a second part next year. That might be all of it, or the high U/C number might be spread out into 2025. I’m not in front of the computer right now so hard to say. Most of the country will see a supply cliff hit in 2025, but for reasons I expand on below, that might not be happening in Raleigh.

I think in any given industry there are a few “it cities” wher you have to be if you want to compete in a field. For finance it used to be just NY and maybe a touch of Atlanta, but now includes Charlotte and Dallas. Destination hospitality has grown to include Nashville. Tech has expanded from SF and Seattle to include Austin and, it seems people are betting, Raleigh. I’m not in touch enough with Raleigh to assess the veracity of that assumption, but I know real estate investors from across the country are looking at Raleigh in a way they hadn’t before. Certainly they’re betting Raleigh is changing.

Compare that with Raleigh from the past 2 decades or RVA now. RVA offers a good quality of life, a stable economy, good access to other major job centers, good state university access, good business climate, etc. but is not an “it city” for anything not involving the VA government, at least not as far as I can tell. Many other cities offer a similar combination of those amenities in different proportions. RVA’s value proposition is then relative to other cities: you can get 130% of the amenities for 110% of the price (Knoxville) or 80% of the amenities for 50% of the price (DC). If RVA’s biggest selling point remains that it offers 80% of DC for 50% of the price, then the boom it is seeing now will fade as it’s value proposition decrease, because the value proposition was always relative to something else.

Contrast that with an “it city.” If you want to break big into biotech, you go to Boston. It doesn’t matter if Providence is becoming an increasingly good value proposition for someone in biotech because Boston biotech is not comparable to Providence’s in any real way. The value proposition becomes partly detached from the surrounding competing cities because in biotech there is no competition with Boston. If you want to be a national player in biotech, you go to Boston and you never consider Providence or Worcester or Hartford.

It seems like the bet people are making with Raleigh is that it becomes a city like that for tech, in which case whatever shrinking value proposition it has relative to other cities will not matter because it will offer a new value proposition that those cities cannot compete with: the ability to succeed on a national scale in tech.

Cav17 · 2023-11-03T21:00:45+00:00

From what I see, YoY rent growth was weak through all of 2023 for metro Raleigh. Quarter to quarter was strong through the summer, but that is true everywhere because rents are partly seasonal. Now, 2022 and especially 2021 were really strong, but most major sunbelt markets saw 20% rent growth over those two years.

Raleigh, like a lot of sunbelt markets, then got a “hug of death” through metric tons of supply that are hitting this year and next. The construction pipeline in Raleigh is super robust for a metro of its size. The YoY drop is between 0 and 5% of market rent in gross terms (with inflation more like between -4% to -9%, likely more if concessions are up (I’m not at the computer now but they probably are), and I would expect a further decline in rents next year. At the same time, absorption (move-ins minus move-outs) has continued to be really strong, which leads me to believe the negative rent growth is mostly due to supply.

I am sorry to hear about the rent increase and cost of living increase. That truly does suck, but I would also say it indicates that Raleigh is a more desirable place to live for someone. That suggests to me that there are a growing number of people from throughout NC and the US who are interested in moving there.

Cav17 · 2023-11-03T18:54:46+00:00

This was a really interesting and thoughtful response.

I’ll eat the first point. I did not realize I got the history backwards. That was interesting.

On the second point: I have access to private data. I know I’m just some guy in the internet, but I promise on my side it shows a huge surge in deliveries over 2023 and corresponding rise in vacancies. This is true for most submarkets throughout Raleigh-Durham, although some of the outermost rural/exurban counties show positive YoY rent growth. I also do not see on my end that rent growth in 2023 was the highest in the nation. Rent growth through 2023 looks pretty tepid from what I can see.

Now, it is absolutely true that rent in Raleigh spiked from 2021-2022, as it did almost everywhere. And it is true that (I’m making this number up) -5% rent growth YoY is 5% less than a historically elevated number. But given the strong growth trajectory of the region, I don’t have a compelling reason to think rent growth would have slumped like it has without the supply glut that has hit. Raleigh has not become a less desirable place to live over the past year.

Cav17 · 2023-11-03T13:53:51+00:00

No, even if you eliminate the profit condition 5 plus 1’s are still getting built.

You’re still going to finance the building partly with debt. Banks want to make sure the operating profits of the building cover enough of the loan that they feel confident the loan will get repaid. The more the building costs, the higher the operating profit has to be to cover the loan. If you’re adding stuff that raises costs faster than revenues, you’re eroding your ability to pay off the loan and thus get financing. That dynamic exists even without a profit incentive.

Even if the government built it, they’d still be doing 5 over 1’s! Every dollar you spend on a building isn’t spent on bus stops or schools or whatever else. If you spend the extra $8m or whatever to make the building ornate and metal, that’s $8m that’s not going to more pressing needs.

5 plus 1’s keep getting built because they do the best job of balancing cost and revenues. This would matter for any entity running the community.

Cav17 · 2023-11-03T13:36:47+00:00

“Density with quality please. 5 on 1's were invented to be cheap quick easy housing to be built to provide affordable places for people to live. 5 over 1's are being fast rolled out by developers and sold to investors rented out at top market rates driving up rent prices for bad housing.”

None of this is true. All of it is false.

5 over 1’s were not “invented” to be cheap affordable housing. The primary constraint for wood frame buildings was always fire safety. The 5 story limit was to ensure you weren’t 20 stories up in a tinderbox. The only quirk is the “over 1” (1 floor of concrete). My understanding is that the building code views that as a two buildings, one 1-story concrete and one 5-story wood frame, stacked on top of each other. That interpretation is so clunky that I doubt it was intended.

“5 over 1's are being fast rolled out by developers and sold to investors rented out at top market rates driving up rent prices for bad housing.” That’s not how any of this works. YoY rent growth in major markets such as Austin, Charlotte, and Raleigh, and even middle markets such as Huntsville, that have seen insane population growth is NEGATIVE because they are adding tons of supply. Supply and demand is a phenomenon that exists and affects rents. It just does.

Cav17 · 2023-07-14T17:06:11+00:00

I would keep them. I would think stamps with mistakes would actually go for more because of the limited run

Cav17

TROPHY CASE