Bad bargain but satisfied in the end | IWC Pilot’s Watch Chronograph Mechaquartz

After reading this post on Fratello i was kind of interested in the IWC Pilot's Watch 3741. Main goal was to wear it on a leather / suede strap because i have a lot of watches with steel bracelets. This all started around the summer of 2023. I was checking eBay and Chrono24 on regular basis but didn't find the one that looked good, for a reasonable price. Then in november 2023 a watch came for sale on C24, cheap. Photo's were bad. I decided to do it. This was how i got the watch:



I was quite happy because i bought it cheap, and in my opinion the watch was good looking. Then someone told me: the watch is not supposed to be polished. That thought kept running in my head and after thoroughly looking at other pictures i saw the problem and the watch lost its attractiveness to me. It was too late to return the watch. My watchmaker told me that he would try to get the satin look back on it, in his spare time. But after a while we discovered some more problems. To properly take the watch in hand, the pushers and pusher housing must be removed from the case. The pusher housing, however, was soldered and pressed into the case, and could not be removed. It had to be drilled out, which took a lot of time. The watchmaker wasn't too keen on that either so the watch remained in a drawer.

My goal was to find another case or a watch that didn't run to replace the case, but that didn't happen, cases or non-functioning 3741's are very hard to find (imo). Suddenly, my luck returned, i spoke with someone who had a case for sale that was not finished. I bought it and my watchmaker brought it back to a condition that suits the watch.

The old polished case:


The cases compared, the new unfinished one below and the polished one on top.



The lugs compared:



The finished watch:



Here on the original IWC leather strap (a bit boring imo):



Summary: in the end very happy with the result. But i need to be much more careful when i buy these kind of watches because in the end moneywise, i better bought a 3741 in good condition because that would have cost me less headaches and time to get the watch i desire.

Thanks for sharing and beautiful end result, although it took a lot of vigilance. Most common advice on here, which you reiterated, seems to boil down to spending more up front for better quality instead of gambling on the less expensive option and pulling your hair out over years and spending same amount if not more. I try to keep reminding myself of this as I inevitably find a “great deal” almost every day that I want to jump on!