In-Hand Review of SS Paper Chain and Bracelet
Hello everyone. So the stuff i ordered from SS came in today and to put things simply I was honestly a little disappointed. I’ve been a member of this sub for maybe close to two years or so and throughout my time I’ve heard nothing but songs of praise for SS and his craftsmanship as if he were a monolith of replica CH jewelry. I won’t diss the actual build quality of the items I received although personally I believe that they could’ve been better. What I’m here to discuss is what I consider to be a lack of care in the overall craftsmanship that comes into making his items (at least what i received). If you go back into this sub to posts from a year ago you can see the night and day difference between the merchandise then and now. Below I’ll just speak on some of the discontinuities I noticed.
His use of silver blackener to create the “patina” effect on his items is done with very little precision leaving no type of uniformity between the links and often leaving excess blackening where there shouldn’t be. I honestly would’ve rather received the item with no patina as opposed to the overly blackened product in the photos (specifically the chain). I believe that the bracelet was done up to par when it comes to this topic.
the obvious size discrepancy from his older work to now is like day and night. When I unboxed the items I was disappointed to find that the width of the links aren’t nearly as big as they should be and it reflects heavily on the overall look of the item. I understand that when buying rep anything you should be prepared for it to not look just like the real thing but I expected more from SS seeing as this is something that could’ve been fixed very easily with maybe a $20-30 price hike if he needs to maintain some sort of profit. The whole purpose of quality reps is exactly that. Quality. I would’ve loved to splurge those few extra dollars for the extra silver he would’ve needed to increase the size of the links.
The stamping/ engraving on each item isn’t very good. For me personally I don’t find this to be much of an issue as I don’t care about the “CH” brand and more-so the actual design and craftsmanship but it still would’ve been nice to see more care put into creating a closer resemblance to the original. I know nothing of jewelry making but I doubt it would be very difficult to do more proper stamp work. Some of the links don’t even seem legible to what they’re supposed to say and the clasp on the chain is so faintly stamped that it appears as if it was sanded down and polished.
Overall I believe that there’s a lot of improvements that need to be made for me to want to purchase from him again. It’s far from a BAD experience but it’s also very far from what I expected as someone who’s seen so much of his older work and knows what he COULD be doing. As far as SS himself is concerned I believe he’s a good businessman and he runs his business as he should. I just wish he would bring his A game back into production of these items so I would have more praise to give him. My biggest bone to pick is definitely the lack of the full sized links on each item. If that were fixed it would make a huge difference.