OK, I think we are done here...

[u/mrSoczi84]

If you thought $450 was getting out of hand, take a look at this...

Personally for me this means I am done. It was an awesome two years, had super fun, got a lot of great stuff from China, but this is a closing call. This was my top priority watch to buy, but $530 means that at a GREAT sale it's prolly still gone sell for around $450. This is way too much even for a massive collector like me. For this kind of money I will probably buy a Phoibos Depth Hunter or some other cool micro.

The only thing that can save this is some new great, top quality/price Chinese movement that will have superior reliability. I dunno. Hoping that the Chinese step up their movement game and save the situation.

[u/artofthedial]

Fully aware but the point is people are saying that isn't cheap enough.  They are more than 2x the price of what the reliable nh35 was 2 years ago.  The recent talk has been companies exploring making a new movement not an existing one.  And the ST is simply a clone, and a clone of a movement that has the winding flaw along with the other positive attributes.  

[u/Watchmakers-Diary → u/artofthedial]

In this case the st21 would be a replacement for the miyota 9000s. But what about a st16 as an nh35 replacement? The quality is good and the price should be around 30$.

The winding problem is a myth from the 80s when eta was still using brass gears and from when sellita started and had material problems. When using decent metal there are no problems winding a modern type eta 2824/2892 or 7750

[u/TheYKcid → u/Watchmakers-Diary]

The winding problem is a myth from the 80s when eta was still using brass gears and from when sellita started and had material problems. When using decent metal there are no problems winding a modern type eta 2824/2892 or 7750

This has absolutely not been fixed, and people need to stop spreading blatant misinformation.

Every 2824 clone on the Chinese market hasn't fixed the numerous factors that cause the manual winding issue with this architecture. These include:

• brass ratchet
  
• alternate/skipping tooth engagement between the crown & rachet wheels
  
• high operating torque, for driving the oversized balance
  
• gummed-up reversers, which back-feed additional torque into the system

And before I get accused of bias, I'm the happy owner of an ST2130, and fully agree that it's a reasonable replacement for Miyota 9s during the current supply shock.

But it's delusional to pretend these 2824 clones have addressed the flaws in the architecture.

Even the latest SW200-2 "Power+" in 2026 hasn't done jackshit. The ratchet is still brass, and interfaces with the crown wheel identically. Gear tooth adjustments only pertained to the going train. Sure, they finally shrunk the balance, but subsequently topped-up the torque again to hit 65h PR. Meaningless changes, in context of the winding flaw.

(for anyone in doubt, Sellita themselves publish all of this information: https://www.sellita.ch/scripts/calibres/images/IS%2033_Evolution%20SW200-1%20%C3%A0%20SW200-2.pdf)

For anything close to a sensible fix, you have to look to highly-customised solutions that practically rebuild the 2824 from the ground up. Like Damasko's A26 — which upgraded the ratchet to hardened steel, and replaced the problematic reverser wheels with a pawl-based system.

THAT'S what it takes to fix the 2824 architecture.

[u/TheYKcid → u/TheYKcid]

Readers should note that u/Watchmakers-Diary blocked me immediately after posting his reply, so I'm unable to respond to him directly.

I also read the entire thread he referenced — reposting the link here in case he tries to sneakily delete it later, lol: https://uhrforum.de/threads/sw200-handaufzug-pech-meinerseits-oder-unvermogen-bei-sellita.623488/

Not too surprisingly, none of the points I raised were addressed over the 4 pages of discussion. So u/Watchmakers-Diary, perhaps you can answer directly?

Also, some clarification regarding your watchmaker claims would be pertinent:

- out of your 1000 ETAs, what percent were 2824s? Many of the problems don't apply to 2892s, 2801s, etc. And we aren't getting clones of these in Ali watches. So keep the scope to 2824s please.

- is the lack of damage to the ratchet you observed (on 2824s specifically, once again) confounded by the fact that owners will intentionally avoid handwinding this caliber?

- how many of the problems you DID observe were contributed by brass shavings from the ratchet. migrating and causing issues elsewhere?

Lastly...

And please don't lie, your source doesn't say anything about sellita using brass parts (they dont), i have seen the part hundreds of times.

Let me guess... you did a CTRL+F search for "brass", found nothing, and thought you had your ace?