Fellows in UK Review - Good service but abused watches - Showing my C-Case

I've been wanting to get this off my chest for some time

First of all their service is pretty good, and they ship watches worldwide for free, so the buying experience is a breeze

However my problem is with the photos, they hide very bad polishing jobs on watches, I was going to chalk this off to me not asking for better photos, however I've seen a couple watches with similar polish jobs, maybe they have an onboard watchmaker that thinks it's a good idea to quickly polish watches before being auctioned - so buyer beware, ask for close up photos!

The watch as shown:


The report:

• Movement is currently functioning.

• Movement has scratches, marks and tarnishing commensurate with general wear visible when viewed under a 4x loupe.

• Dial appears to be in a generally good condition with no marks visible when viewed under a 4x loupe.

• Hands show noticeable marks and tarnishing. Some paint appears to have chipped off of the minute hand.

• Glass appears free of significant scratches or marks when viewed under a 4x loupe.

• Case shows light scratches and marks.

• Crown has light scratches and marking.

• Strap appears to be in good condition with minor marks and creasing.

• Buckle appears to be in good condition with minor marks and scratches when viewed under a 4x loupe.

The watch:


You can see a new but wrong crystal put, and the watchmaker bending original hands just for them to clear this new wrong crystal

So basically this watch was clearly abused to look good for the auction ... I'm quite dissatisfied and I paid almost 2X the market average for it, going to invest quite a bit more into it just to correct the case and replace the hands

It's on me for not paying more attention, however, regardless of me or someone else buying this watch, abuse of this kind shouldn't happen, I'm sad that I endorsed it and the responsibility to fix it weighs high

I wasn't aware that there were two tone (steel / gold) c-case connies. Can someone confirm deny this? I'm aware there was a WG and YG c-case connie... As for the pictures... if I'm not satisfied with them I always ask for more.

It's a gray dial, GP watches have white dials


They exist, mainly in UK - some trends are very location specific, crosshairs are mostly in South America etc.

If it was that common, I wouldn't pay this much for the watch 😀

No other example of this variation, shortly after mine a white linen dial with gold indices inside a steel case was on auction in UK, that combination is always questionable since the dial is seen commonly on 168.029's - this one is an unseen dial

Makes it all the more sad that it was abused like this, I suspect it just had a little bit of regular wear and a scratched or damaged crystal

I have a similar 168.017 from UK too, that one has a silver sunburst dial with gold indices, while GP watches usually have white sunburst dials

I think Omega made an effort to make these distinct as well

Looking at recent auctions, this is the watch that triggered me and made me suspicious of a potential pattern:

https://www.fellows.co.uk/3091-lot-...e=&sub_cat=&utm_source=&view=lot_detail&year=

Another similarly sloppily polished watch, their condition report reports the case in good condition

There's someone in US who do these kind of things mainly to C-Case's, probably someone in UK doing the same, if he checks the forums by any chance, don't polish these things, it reduces the value ...