So for anyone who's interested at all, this reached a very odd conclusion for me today. Normally I don't discuss dealings openly, but this one is vague enough as to be (IMO) harmless, and too bizarre not to share.
After sleeping on it, I decided to let the seller know I was going to pass - rarely get to wear my vintage pieces, and it appeared to have more wear on the movement than I thought when I magnified the images I received.
I opened my messages to find a message from them, saying (all the following is paraphrased): "they'd gotten new info on the watch, sorry for the trouble, but he was re-listing at a new (and higher) price." "I say no problem, you probably could/will get another 100-200 hundred from a dedicated collector, no harm done because I decided to pass anyway, GLWS, etc etc." "Great, thanks!"
Looking through the new listings for the day I saw his repost...at about 4 times what it had initially been listed for. Now, giving the benefit of a doubt, I think to myself, there has to be some sort of celebrity provenance or something...nope. I shrug, go about my day, then tonight went to see if anything new was up...and the asking price is now half of the quadrupled price from this morning.
I share all of this to say: I have never been a bigger advocate of 'buy the seller' than I am today - buy the buyer too, for that matter, had a great offer on a minor piece that was so blatantly a scam it was mind-boggling - and to thank all the great folks here on the forum who helped me learn about this piece and in the end, I suspect, dodge a bullet on this one, even unintentionally.
Hope everyone out there is well! 😀
