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mjb
·Apologies in advance for the verbosity.
For consideration:
1. the new 57 in burgundy. Unique, gorgeous, will I tire of it? Obtainable, new for around $7K
2. The new FOIS. Difficult, but I can get one for a bit below msrp.
I began this post over the weekend, and didn't finish. I love the pictures of the FOIS, but of course I can't get one from my local AD (although they will be happy to accept a deposit with no idea of when it may arrive) so I started shopping used even though I still haven't seen one in the flesh, as it were. Still, I liked the size and colors and the bracelet.
I had little choice but to look at the grey market. One of our forum TS had one used, but he's not real responsive (i.e. crickets) if you PM him here, so by the time I emailed him with an offer, it was gone. He offered me a new one instead, but by the time I agreed to that, it too was gone. I took that as karma.
I found a couple of other grey dealers, but one absolutely refused to prove his identity, and I'm not sending $7500 to some dude with a generic name in a high population state that would prove impossibble to track down should the watch fail to appear. The other dealer was even more hidden.
Now, I get it, there are a lot of bad actors out there, and you want to remain anonymous to a certain degree, but these guys aren't real dealers like the ones with a physical store and who do this full time. They're just "dealers" in the sense that they are part of that network and make some money on the side. But it seems to me that many of them have a self-inflated sense of worth and trustworthiness that is not justified.
I've bought and sold a bunch of watches in my time. I have no issue providing copies of driver's license, etc. for any buyer to validate my existance. I expect the same from sellers, and up until recently that hasn't been an issue. And once I have their full name and address, I Google them and see if there are any flags. I have yet to have an issue with any watch bought or sold this way.
I also considered buying from Joma (who I've used before) or Watchmaxx, but the FOIS is unobtainable from those guys. And I still had doubts about that burgundy dial. My history with brightly colored watches has not been good, I tire of them quickly.
So, in the end, I was able to find a very nice previously-enjoyed blue '57 on eBay. Ironically, the seller is disposing of it to buy a FOIS, and although I have to pay sales tax, I do have the security of the eBay authentication, which also functions as a kind of escrow service as well, since they don't pay the seller until after it passes authentication, which also means verifying that included stuff (box, cards, etc.) are actually included. I recently sold a nice Speedy that way (after no significant action here and on WUS) and it was quite easy, other than the fees.
I've had the benefit of seeing the blue '57 in person, but I couldn't get past the $9500 MSRP on the thing and had to wait until prices got semi-reasonable.
If you're still with me here, you're probably wondering WTH is this guy's point? Honestly, I've kind of forgotten myself. I guess the point is that while watch shopping is still fun, doing the research and looking for the best deal, it's still a lot of money to be throwing around and it seems to be getting more difficult to protect yourself.
I'm reminded of an event years ago... I was on a car forum, and had put my car up for sale. Some dude on there said that he was interested, but as an incredibly wealthy attorney he wouldn't have the funds until the next month when some deal was supposed to close. I sold the car a few weeks later and he BLASTED me on the forum for not waiting for him. This is someone I've never met, only knew of via this annonymous forum, who claimed to be wealthy but yet couldn't be bothered to send me a deposit, and I'm at fault? I can't help but think that this is why there is so much successful fraud out there, and why others don't understand why I don't trust them even though they may have 100s of posts on a web forum.
Or in the case of these "dealers", who think that a fancy web site and an LLC gives them any kind of trustworthiness.
In the end, I was able to buy the watch for a fair market price from a fellow enthusiast (who lost a bit since he had bought it new) and although he paid those outrageous eBay fees and I had to pay sales tax, well, that's kind of what keeps the world spinning around, right?
-mjb
For consideration:
1. the new 57 in burgundy. Unique, gorgeous, will I tire of it? Obtainable, new for around $7K
2. The new FOIS. Difficult, but I can get one for a bit below msrp.
I began this post over the weekend, and didn't finish. I love the pictures of the FOIS, but of course I can't get one from my local AD (although they will be happy to accept a deposit with no idea of when it may arrive) so I started shopping used even though I still haven't seen one in the flesh, as it were. Still, I liked the size and colors and the bracelet.
I had little choice but to look at the grey market. One of our forum TS had one used, but he's not real responsive (i.e. crickets) if you PM him here, so by the time I emailed him with an offer, it was gone. He offered me a new one instead, but by the time I agreed to that, it too was gone. I took that as karma.
I found a couple of other grey dealers, but one absolutely refused to prove his identity, and I'm not sending $7500 to some dude with a generic name in a high population state that would prove impossibble to track down should the watch fail to appear. The other dealer was even more hidden.
Now, I get it, there are a lot of bad actors out there, and you want to remain anonymous to a certain degree, but these guys aren't real dealers like the ones with a physical store and who do this full time. They're just "dealers" in the sense that they are part of that network and make some money on the side. But it seems to me that many of them have a self-inflated sense of worth and trustworthiness that is not justified.
I've bought and sold a bunch of watches in my time. I have no issue providing copies of driver's license, etc. for any buyer to validate my existance. I expect the same from sellers, and up until recently that hasn't been an issue. And once I have their full name and address, I Google them and see if there are any flags. I have yet to have an issue with any watch bought or sold this way.
I also considered buying from Joma (who I've used before) or Watchmaxx, but the FOIS is unobtainable from those guys. And I still had doubts about that burgundy dial. My history with brightly colored watches has not been good, I tire of them quickly.
So, in the end, I was able to find a very nice previously-enjoyed blue '57 on eBay. Ironically, the seller is disposing of it to buy a FOIS, and although I have to pay sales tax, I do have the security of the eBay authentication, which also functions as a kind of escrow service as well, since they don't pay the seller until after it passes authentication, which also means verifying that included stuff (box, cards, etc.) are actually included. I recently sold a nice Speedy that way (after no significant action here and on WUS) and it was quite easy, other than the fees.
I've had the benefit of seeing the blue '57 in person, but I couldn't get past the $9500 MSRP on the thing and had to wait until prices got semi-reasonable.
If you're still with me here, you're probably wondering WTH is this guy's point? Honestly, I've kind of forgotten myself. I guess the point is that while watch shopping is still fun, doing the research and looking for the best deal, it's still a lot of money to be throwing around and it seems to be getting more difficult to protect yourself.
I'm reminded of an event years ago... I was on a car forum, and had put my car up for sale. Some dude on there said that he was interested, but as an incredibly wealthy attorney he wouldn't have the funds until the next month when some deal was supposed to close. I sold the car a few weeks later and he BLASTED me on the forum for not waiting for him. This is someone I've never met, only knew of via this annonymous forum, who claimed to be wealthy but yet couldn't be bothered to send me a deposit, and I'm at fault? I can't help but think that this is why there is so much successful fraud out there, and why others don't understand why I don't trust them even though they may have 100s of posts on a web forum.
Or in the case of these "dealers", who think that a fancy web site and an LLC gives them any kind of trustworthiness.
In the end, I was able to buy the watch for a fair market price from a fellow enthusiast (who lost a bit since he had bought it new) and although he paid those outrageous eBay fees and I had to pay sales tax, well, that's kind of what keeps the world spinning around, right?
-mjb
