Thank you
@JwRosenthal , I feel much better now
😁
I can definitely relate. One of my projects as an example:
I'm a fan of this kind of patina and it was offered to me for ~1100€ if I remember correctly. Doesn't sound too bad for a pretty sharp, black pie pan dogleg Constellation if it just needs a tiny bit of work? Well.
It needed:
-the correct flat foot thin decagonal crown (50€)
-a new plexi (it was cracked) (50€)
-a correct second hand (20€)
-aaaaand a cal. 551, as, unfortunately, it came with a non-COSC-552. (200€):
It didn't stop there, though. I liked the case - it had obviously been worn, but the lugs were pretty sharp. Except the top right lug was more worn than the others and, most of all, had a major ding. At about that time I got to know a case restorer who offered to fix just this part of the case and I figured great, good opportunity to give this a try.
Of course, on the way to him, the parcel with the case got lost. At least I had kept the case back... So, the search for a spare case began. I ended up finding a 168.005 case, which should've been identical, or so I thought. 500€ later I found out that there were minute differences between the products of different case manufacturers, and my 167.005 caseback wouldn't actually fit. The search continued, I found another case (400€) and finally got the watch assembled and serviced (300€).
In the end, the total came to ca. 2220€ and it took a year or so until all the parts were sourced and I had the finished product:
Luckily, the insurance paid for the lost case, and the costs for some of the spare parts were comparably cheap because I had them anyway/due to the help of some generous fellow OF-users. Still, the initial invest was roughly the purchase price of the watch itself.
I'm not regretting this in any way, and often the process is actually quite fun. But I guess this thread is definitely one that we should link to every now and then when someone joins, asks about a watch and figures "I'll just need a new hand, a crown and a new bezel".
