Flea market find- yet another update

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I have a copy of the Watkins book and it makes very interesting reading for those interested in horology.

Perhaps I should have said "As you may know, the Bidynator was the world's first successful bi-directional rotor winding automatic wrist watch and was produced by Felsa, not "that other company".

Richard's site has a number of very interesting books/articles and well worth a look.
 
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No watches this time but an observation of what happens on so called antique markets now. On a stretch of about 50 yards there must be at least 4 stalls of people who lay out some cheap and broken watches and have signs saying that they buy stuff. Including old watches of course. The watch pics they chose to illustrate are very telling.

I could not resist, I asked them if they were prepared to pay 40K for a watch. Their reply was to say it depends on the condition and they really wanted to know if I had a watch to sell. I think they were disappointed when I said no, but that some of their pictures could be 40K watches. Then they absolutely wanted to know if I had other things to sell.
 
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Syrte, I have to confess that I'd be willing to poke around in their stuff, much to Mrs. noelekal's dismay. She thinks that I have enough stuff.
 
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Syrte, I have to confess that I'd be willing to poke around in their stuff, much to Mrs. noelekal's dismay. She thinks that I have enough stuff.
I promise you there’s virtually nothing worth poking around for.
They make sure the good stuff goes into the dealer circuit— not to the people on the street.
 
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This is so true Syrte.

The quality of the "stuff" (insert your favorite stuff to accumulate here) has declined significantly in the past decade or so at antique malls, shops, shows as well as on the ever present Ebay. I suppose that there's only so much good "stuff" to go around. Trouble is, the bottom-of-the-barrel residues have become priced like it's the premium quality stuff.
 
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The quality of the "stuff" (insert your favorite stuff to accumulate here) has declined significantly ..Trouble is, the bottom-of-the-barrel residues have become priced like it's the premium quality stuff.
Agree!
 
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This is so true Syrte.

The quality of the "stuff" (insert your favorite stuff to accumulate here) has declined significantly in the past decade or so at antique malls, shops, shows as well as on the ever present Ebay. I suppose that there's only so much good "stuff" to go around. Trouble is, the bottom-of-the-barrel residues have become priced like it's the premium quality stuff.
They are very clearly not there to sell. It’s just the vehicle by which they can get the foot traffic to fleece someone out of a grandpa’s sock drawer treasures.
 
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They are very clearly not there to sell. It’s just the vehicle by which they can get the foot traffic to fleece someone out of a grandpa’s sock drawer treasures.
That’s exactly right. And they are more and more numerous it seems.