Hodinkee/Crown & Caliber… bad customer service?

Annapolis

I also use Hodinkee/Chubb. Have never had to make a claim. I think a lot of people here just add it to their homeowners policy.

Annapolis

Cheers, yeah I've used Chrono24 once... maybe twice. It's a bit more like eBay, since it's a platform for private sellers and dealers rather than a standalone reseller (like Hodinkee, WatchBox, etc), meaning you're sort of at the mercy of whatever random individual/business has the watch. But C24 does supply some security via escrow. The one experience I remember---a few years ago---wasn't great: bought a neovintage Glycine from Italy and when it arrived it was running incredibly fast---like gaining more than an hour a day---even after demagnetizing and ruling out that possibility. Probably an issue with the spring. Anyway, I'll spare you the details, but I had to negotiate an international return with a skeptical (but I think fundamentally honest) seller, and C24 wasn't very easy to work with.

Not saying I wouldn't use that platform again---I check it all the time---but, as with eBay, you have to keep both eyes open and understand the potential risks and hassles. You also have to learn to use filtered search so that you're only seeing watches that are actually in stock. If you don't do this, you'll get many results (sometimes a majority) that, if you look at the fine print, say "item needs to be procured" (lately expressed as "ships within 30 days," or the like). Meaning the seller has posted a bunch of pictures and written a convincing listing, but doesn't actually have the watch itself: you click buy, you send your money, and then you wait---potentially weeks or months---potentially until never never---while they try to "source" a similar watch for you. It's not technically a "scam," but it's VERY shady, and I wish C24 wouldn't allow that. So... be careful with that site!

Sometimes if I find a watch I like on C24 (that's clearly "in stock") I'll do a bit of sleuthing and find it listed elsewhere---if it's a dealer, on their own direct site---and will go that route instead.

NGO1

Two of my favorites are purchased from Dink. They answered all my questions via text and sent ton of photos. They even gift wrap the giant box, per wife’s request. This was before Forster exit.

Annapolis

Yikes---it's hard to read.

I owe it to them to follow up here: after my third attempt to contact them, they did immediately write back, and it was clearly an actual human doing so. (So it could just be luck of timing with them right now.) They verified that the watch was in stock, but they refused to take a movement photo or confirm the lug-to-lug measurement. Even so, they offered me a 15% discount. I ended up passing on the watch and going with a vintage piece (from a private sale) instead. Since then, I note that they've lowered the watch's price on their site nearly (but not entirely) to what they offered me.

I am by no means a market expert or a prognosticator with any credibility at all. But I do check various preowned sites pretty much daily---sort of like glancing at the headlines---and there are certain pieces (usually Rolex) that I make a point of tracking, as I think they're decent indices of how things are trending. And things are trending down. Maybe not precipitously, but noticeably. It's feeling safe to say the hype-days are behind us, or at least getting to be so. My watches-to-watch are specifically not hype pieces (not, for example, Subs and GMTS and Daytonas), as I think those are too volatile and have too many collectability-variables for any dabbler to comprehend. But, for example, a c.2000 Explorer I that would have commanded close to $8k 18 months ago is now sitting (with several others just like it from the same era) unsold at $5300. And a yellow gold Day Date from the late 80s that would have been listed for $19k 18 months ago is now at $14k. Hodinkee might be the canary in the coal mine---I suspect a lot of would-have-been "investors" are about to take heavy losses if they go to sell, assuming they can even find buyers.