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tikkathree
·Hey folks,
this is a weird one, so I felt like sharing it. Quick backstory: I was looking for a cheap, vintage Omega. A friend of mine wanted to gift one to her boyfriend, so she approached me. Relatively small budget, but at least the dial didn’t matter much as it was supposed to be redialed in green (let’s not discuss this).
Anyway, there wasn’t much time, I found this one and won the auction. Classic Genéve, solid cal 601, and since the dial didn’t matter, I figured this might be a valid option for 300€. Case looked alright, movement ok. Here are the pictures from the auction:
That’s all there was on pictures.
In the description with the usual praise the watch only partly deserved, the seller stated that he’d only accept money transfer. Apparently, he forgot to delete PayPal as a payment option, though, so I simply used that. Why not, I figured, no reason to skip on the extra layer of security. Today, I received the watch, which was posted from a PO box. Here are my pictures. Notice any differences?
I went from initial disappointment to scepticism to giving the seller the benefit of a doubt - until I opened it, saw it has the same movement / serial, and then I just had to laugh.
For those of you who want the challenge of the quiz, don’t scroll down further yet.
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Here’s what I mean:
It’s (mostly) a different watch.
1. The Genève I received isn’t waterproof. It’s only waterproo. 🙁 Which is also written in a different font/spacing.
2. I paid for “T - SWISS MADE - T”. All I received was “T SWISS MADE T” - no “-“. In exchange, I’m getting minute ticks that have an even length!
3. Despite the horrible eBay picture with nothing but reflections - it’s very apparent the one pictured doesn’t look like it was stored in a box with metal scrap and shaken regularly. Oh, and the crown is different.
4. Left picture is from eBay, right one is mine. Between me buying and me receiving it, it must’ve gotten serviced multiple times.
5. While the movement is the same, the underside of the lugs somehow got scratched / beaten up significantly.
So, yeah. I’m not sure what to make of this. When I wrote “benefit of a doubt” I meant that for a minute there, I was assuming the seller must’ve mixed up two similar watches and just have sent me the wrong example. That was until I opened it and saw it had the same movement / serial.
This means that he took the pictures of the nice case and the cal 601 in it, then transplanted the movement to a beaten up case and sold it with pictures from the former example. Or am I missing something? Is there any way this wasn’t intentional? And if it was, for what? To get 300€ instead of, I don’t know, 200-250€ he would’ve gotten for the actual one? This is pretty much bottom end of men’s vintage Omegas anyway, so what’s there to gain? I really don’t get it.
I sent the seller a message with a few pictures, asking if he sent me the wrong one by any chance. Let’s see what the response is. If there isn’t any by tomorrow I’ll just contact eBay and get my money back.
Right now, this feels like the most pathetic eBay scam I’ve ever come across.
TBH I would expect any kind of seller remorse and I'd fire your comparative photos straight to EBay.
