Hype Experience AU - Bioceramic Speedmaster

Rman

I heard a story from Tokyo that mirrored this completely except for the unruly behavior.

Trampling people for $400 profit on a watch? A new low.

JwRosenthal

Welcome to the Omegaforum @DiverTrust - what you witnessed is not the watch community- at all!
Many of us have patiently waited years to get the watches we wanted…years.

DiverTrust

I agree. 😀
It was seriously unsafe.

DiverTrust

That’s crazy. I didn’t notice this but there was a portion of the other side of the shop that I could not see. Maybe they were slipping them in. If that’s the case that’s terrible. Man it was a nightmare, really.
Also, you should have seen some of watches on people there. There were definitely watch collects amongst the crowd.
Again though I’m really surprised Swatch/Omega didn’t do something to try and offset all this. Just not a good look imho.
I get it though on the hypesters/flippers.

dsio

Yea it’s mostly a lot more chill than that indeed, there likely are a whole lot of sneaker scalper types in that queue too accounting for some of the bad behaviour.

DiverTrust

I got to Chadstone (Melb, AU) around 3am, lined up outside, there were only about 30 of us. As it approached 5am the line had about 300 people in it. All of the sudden someone from the way back bolted for the mall door which caused everyone else to do the same. The shop is inside the mall and the glass doors weren’t open yet but a swarm of people were there now outside in a heartbeat and us in the front lost our spots.

The security guards came and they tried to heard people to the one side prior to the entrance opening. It kinda worked but one group of kids hung by the adjacent sliding glass door and sure enough at 5:30am they all slid open. It was then a stampede to the shop which wasn’t far. I saw a girl get trampled and another I heard broke her arm.

Of course those of us who were there first lost our original spots because of this. A few made it to the front but most were way back by now.

The whole time shady people were cutting up to the front, pushing and I heard a few brawls. It was one of the more disgusting displays of human nature I’ve seen.

One idiot hipster wearing his Tudor just blatantly cut in. He was very close to getting beat up as he wouldn’t move. By this time there would have been over 1000 people in the line. They booed and booed him. It was kind of funny. He just eventually walked off with a sense of weird entitlement.

The line wrapped around the inside of the mall and you would have had to have seen it to believe it.

You were only allowed to get one watch. As it turned out they only had 150 total. I got close, was next to the Swatch shop window the whole time but we seemed to not move as we watched people let in one at a time to get their watches. There were about 10 police crowd controlling (they had to be called in) and they sold out by 11:30am - store opened at 9am. They took their time selling.

Well there ya go, that’s what I saw. Bit disappointed.

(Note the amount of people in this photo!)

cvalue13

sorry you feel frustrated and dealt with the horde.

but while all these behaviors and ceremonies might be a bit new to the high end watch crowd, it’s any-given-Sunday stuff for the broader hype collaboration scene. Supreme, Nike, New Balance, Play Station, etc., all have these things going on. I’d bet almost everyone you witnessed exhibit bad behavior were hype resellers.

Setting aside the obvious downsides only for a moment, it’s pretty nuts that any low market watch brand (talking about Swatch Watch) has managed to achieve this level of response. Despite the down sides, I’d guess Casio, G-Shock, etc., are a good bit envious at the moment.

Again, sorry you got slimed by the hype horde