Thought I would pass this along. That site gets a lot of st on here but this deserves a read.

https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/carl-spencers-rolex-sea-dweller

Read the article and would hate for this watch not to get back to this kid. Hope he finds it.

 

Have dropped the team over at Fellows an email to see if they can contact the buyer and make them aware of the situation/see if they still have the watch, and want to sell.

Under data protection they sure as hell can't give the buyers details out without explicit consent.

 

Agree that strict confidentiality by all involved would be the right idea here. While it would be nice and make a good story to get the watch back to the kid as his father intended, I could see it turning a little ugly if the new owner is pressured into selling/giving away a watch they bought and bringing unwanted attention upon them. I hope his son does find a way to purchase it back though!

 

http://www.expressandstar.com/news/2012/01/19/tragic-divers-watches-to-go-up-for-sale/carl-spencer/

Doesn't want the Doxas?

 

As the son of a diver who lived through his encounter with the dreaded bends, I sympathise with this. My dad's diver is the most special watch I own - I can only imagine how emotional a piece it would be had he not been fortunate enough to survive. Hope it is found and sold to the kid.

 

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/www.bi...ly-of-lichfield-diver-carl-spencer-189513.amp

Sounds like things went really south...

 

Just talking to the team at Fellows... no one had contacted them about this.

Hodinkee get a bashing for sure, and in this case are trying to help the kid out, but if they'd done something that took me less than 5 minutes to do, they could have avoided the sensationalist sentence at the end.

Wanna play at being a journalist? Then research the heck out of your story, BEFORE, publishing.

 

[\sarcasm] But if they had solved the puzzle all by themselves, that wouldn't make for very interesting reading! Nor would we have shared it or be talking about it! [/sarcasm]

 

They could have fact checked... Fellows say no one has contacted them about this before the story being posted.

So it's ok to post something with a negative slant against a company (i.e. They won't help, or even respond), without asking the company if they've even been contacted?

Lazy "journalism".

 

You do realise I was agreeing with you!

 

Sorry dude, we NEED a sarcasm font.

 

All good.

 

I wish I was as cool as @dsio /s

 

You're right Ash... we're just getting to grips with this... I don't like it as much as the Prattchett games we play, but it's ok.. /uncool

 

You may laugh, but that's the 'cardboard crack' that funded my watch hobby

 

And updated:

"A representative of the Spencer family reached out to Fellows in December of 2016 and they went ahead and contacted the seller explaining the situation. Unfortunately, the winner of the watch in 2012 had already sold the piece and would not divulge to whom the watch was sold – all Fellows could do was pass on the contact information of the Spencer family, which they did."

 

I guess the thing to do is to offer the buyer a new one in exchange for the old one. Perhaps they would go for it. Of course you'd have to find them first.

 

It is a nice story that makes for good reading (who does not want to help the son) but I am very ambivalent about the whole approach. It feels a bit like cyberbullying on Hodinkee's part. They invest nothing (who would pass on a feel-good story like that; tyrantlizardrex's update is eloquent) and the person who gets screwed in the end is the guy who now has the watch in his hands. What is he supposed to do, give it away in front of Hodinkee's camera? Who cares about the memories that he created with this watch? This forum and the watch world is full of watches that probably have heart-wrenching stories. They also accompany us in our lives and that's what makes vintage special. That said, I really hope that the son gets reunited with his father's watch. A message for Hodinkee. If you are serious about this, you can offer to purchase the watch on behalf on the son (make a $100k standing offer to whoever owns the watch). That would show some real commitment.