Is anyone else having weird buying/selling encounters?

I'm not a huge grey market guy, but many of the watches I like the most are out of production, so I tend to end up there; and while our classifieds section is proudly full of solid members, I think we can all admit most of what gets posted here on OF isn't the widest ranging by any means.

So yes, I am guilty of perusing all the other usual suspects. But recently I have had two of the strangest encounters in my ten years or so of watch collecting.

1- A dealer I did business with ages ago approached me with a semi-grail piece he knew I wanted. I told him to let me run some numbers, came back to him with what I thought was an enthusiastic 'yeah if you can hold it for a week or so for me to cash out some other stuff it's a go'. "No man I need X to hold it." ......you approached me admitting you didn't know anyone else who wanted one, now you want half down for a ten day wait? As soon as I pointed out he came to me complaining he couldn't shift it, really just that he had approached me at all and not the other way around, all communication ceased. Weird, but ok...

2- Then, this one was from way outta left field. A collector/dealer I vaguely know approached me to offer a watch he had and thought I might be interested in - we'd never talked about it before, I'd never mentioned it, it's a somewhat obscure piece in the low five digits usually. We talked, all seemed amicable, got down to prices and seemed like we were heading towards a deal; couldn't bridge that last few hundred dollar gap, I told him it wasn't the one for me for now but to let me know if he changed his mind. He goes on to tell me that I should 'just float the rest on a credit card' - after saying 'no problem if the deal isn't for you man!' about half a dozen times. I again simply told him I was at my top end for that model, and now the guy has the thing listed for crazy money - won't even deign to acknowledge I made a fair and open offer now. It was heading towards rude from both of us so I finally just wished him GLWS.

Is this some weird new 'tactic'? One of these guys moves five and six figure pieces daily, the other has about two dozen watches total at any given time. So I don't get the correlation, if there is any. Totally different pieces, neither heavily sought, and in each case the seller came to me...but these days me telling the seller I'd rather wait so we both get a fair deal is in some way being a jerk? I didn't string either along, no promises or deals were made let alone broken, but...both see me as the 'bad guy'. Sure making money is great, but isn't this just fun for anyone anymore?

Might've just been two weird coincidences, but the back to back timing about such different watches from such different sellers was just...weird I guess. Maybe it's just me, but curious to see if anyone else is encountering stuff like this in the hobby.

*Grumpy old man "damn you kids!" rant of the day over.

You make a good point - the good old hard sell. :/

You know I'll be honest; I hadn't really taken that dip into account because neither of these are from the 'crown', but these guys do work with Rolex a lot - so if either are leveraged heavily that may be a fair consideration. Actually, I'm fairly certain one is, come to think of it. Hm. Thanks for bringing that up amigo! Does help put it in perspective a bit.

The scalpers are about to be scalped... oh so funny! The smug backpack flippers (self proclaimed experts and traders) are gonna get fried... there should be some bargains to be had over the next 12-18months