Had an interesting experience recently whilst attempting to purchase a Cartier watch. It was being sold as one of the new Santos De Cartier medium models (WSSA0010), second hand, and from a seller who had said it was recently serviced with receipts (the model came with its box and papers too). We had agreed a price (good price, but not too good to be true), but whilst doing a bit of research on the watch I found that with Cartier’s new extended warranty scheme you can enter the serial of a watch online and it will tell you what the watch should be, and when it was made.


It transpired that the watch had started its life as a gold bezel model and clearly been altered to the steel version at some point (which is very weird given it’s only 18 months old! And I can’t imagine there is a huge demand for modern after market Cartier bezels).


However it got me wondering if any members are aware of other manufactures who offer the ability to check serial numbers online in this way, and if people think it would be a useful option for manufacturers to provide more generally; even if just on modern watches? I realise the counter argument is that it would be easier to fake a serial number for a watch if you can check you’ve given a fake watch a correct serial number before you try and fob it off.

I don’t know how much information this example gives for older Cartier models.


Andy

 

could it be that the watch has a white gold bezel that you mistake as steel? otherwise if the seller is a straight up person then I would suspect some sort of glitch in the cartier serial number system since it's such a late model watch and there's clearly no rational advantage to alter it's bezel metal. any perceived difference in value would be minimal vs the effort involved.