Officine Panerai

mirador
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Not too tough at all

My experience is limited to the 26k, regarding the case, it presents a very nice consistently 'flat' surface.  But for toughness, I had the inevitable problems with changing straps - on my very first effort, 25% of the screw-head literally chipped off, upon contact with the screw-driver head :-(  a few changes later and small 'nicks' started appearing on the lugs.  I just couldn't bear to see this beautiful watch revert to a beater so I reluctantly sold it before I did any meaningful damage.

But don't take my word for it - refer to panerai.watchprosite.com   where Sig.Bonati states " we started to work on the ceramic case...because we had to find a substitute for PVD.  The market was very demanding of the black color, and I didn’t want to insist on PVD because, as you know, PVD can have problems with the quality if you scratch it.  And once it’s scratched, you can do nothing more."

and in another interview > >

"Why did you wait so long before issuing a modern black-cased Panerai?
It’s true that we have the greatest legitimacy to create black-cased watches such as the PAM 4 and 9 that we made earlier. This is a direction that the entire industry has followed, but by using PVD to make their cases black. Now, those early cases that we made using PVD proved too fragile. They scratch easily and once that happened, you can’t do anything about it. For me, that was unacceptable. Because I believe that reliability has to be one of our core values, and issuing something that I know cannot last easily goes against that. Because if you ensure reliability, you ensure your business for the future. Today, I see people making gold and platinum PVD cases. But in two or three years, what’s going to happen to those watches? This is a big risk, and who loses in the end? The collectors!

We have done PVD watches only once in our recent history and that was for a group of collectors (the PAM 195 created for Paneristi.com). The watches were sold with the express knowledge that these cases are fragile, so buyers know perfectly what to expect. But you cannot put this kind of watch on the normal production. Otherwise, some innocent guy may buy this watch and wear it, and when it scratches, he’s going to be very unhappy. This will affect our reputation and I will not allow this to happen. I understood that there was a hunger for black Panerais, but we had to find a way to create a highly reliable product for our collectors. "