I'd like to ask for a sanity check opinion please, oh great OF Speedmaster gurus...

I was looking at this on Ebay, set up a late bid and didn't get it... no big deal, there's always another one.
But I've just received a 2nd chance offer...



I asked the seller if the brownish mark on the left side of the 3 o'clock subregister was on the dial or the crystal, and he said it's on the crystal (so I presume will polish out).

To me, the lume looks good and what I can see, the rest of the dial looks pretty good too. Hands match too.
DON bezel looks original, a little beaten up but not as bad as many. 1039/516 bracelet has had a life too, but looks to be in OK shape. Serial number checks out

There are a few issues that the seller describes, so the watch would need servicing.

Here's the listing in its full glory
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One slight concern I have is the inner caseback doesn't have any kind of engraving (like the guilloche patterns most often seen) - I'm probably nit-picking though.


So, to me - this looks like a decent, honest watch that might need a little reviving to bring it back to what would be a "good" condition according to SM101's price chart, which would value a good DON 69 at $6800 head only. Asking price is a little over £5k so it's no bargain, but then the bezel and bracelet could account for £2k of that.

What do we think?

 

Looks good to my uneducated eye but just be careful the offfer is legit and not from a hacked account or some other chicanery.

 

Looks fine to me and it’s returnable

 

Looks good, better than most for sale, as long as that marks are on the crystal and not the dial. US$7,000 or there about doesn't sound bad with the 1039, depending how stretched it is. Nice DON bezel.

 

Hmmm, thanks guys. I'm tempted

 

Looks great ... every watch needs servicing.

 

Right, I've been thinking. And I think I'm going to let this one pass. The watch looks like it could be in OK shape, though the crystal is a bit scratched up and it looks like there's a dink on the outer edge by 1 oclock that at first I just thought was a reflection, so it wouldn't necessarily polish up well.

The thing that's put me off most though is that old adage about buying the seller. Everything about him checks out - but he never seems to sell high value items and everything else in his Sold listings is BIN rather than auction format. And the biggie for me, is that the bidder listing is all private, so I've no way of knowing if there's a shill at work or not.

Given that it got bid up and then 2nd chance offered a few days after the end of the sale, it's always possible that a load of genuine bidders were after it and the top one just couldn't complete. But then it's entirely possible that this isn't the case and I'm inclined to walk.

Or should I take a punt and pray to PayPal ;-)

 

Sounds like me. Been an eBay member for, I dunno, 13 years, and only sold maybe 3 things...along with that, despite my minimal (but 100% positive) track record, eBay has for some reason beyond me limited my selling to something like $450...in the words of the great @nonuffinkbloke, "Well FAKK me OL boots right between the bollocks then"...if I want to sell something of greater value than $450, I have to start it at $1 in auction format. Not sure if I am prepared to do that hey...

I only recently learnt about shill-bidding, but surely if the seller was doing it, he would not do it from his seller account (wouldn't eBay check on things like this automatically)? So would thus look like a normal bidder...

Only you can decide Nothing ventured, nothing gained...if its not really speaking to you then maybe best to let it go...but if it is...

 

I think you are right to walk away...
I have never understood why someone would bid for something and then not complete the transaction.
There is no way for me to know whether the bidding on this item was fair or not, but I never go for 2nd chance offers.

 

Exactly. What is a private auction for when nicks are all anonymized? My guess is the first bidder was the seller himself with another account so that he is able to see your reservation price. As he was comfortable with this, he offered the watch to you at this price.

 

This ^

 

Yeah, agree - typical shill bidding would be to have some (0) feedback buyers competing for the watch all the way up to 5 grand...

 

Highly skeptical of 2nd offers

 

First time I ever sold an expensive watch on eBay, I think a (0) feedback scammer made the initial bid, but then a real buyer showed up not long before the deadline. I messaged him saying "I would like to talk to you, and if I were you, I'd want to talk to me too". We exchanged details, spoke, and both of us were much happier about the eventual transaction.

In this case, I did exchange messages with the seller before the end of the initial listing, and was pretty happy. Since receiving the "2nd chance" offer, I've sent several messages and heard nothing in response …

I am not so sceptical of 2nd chance offers, if the seller sent me a message alongside - as I have also done before. Along the lines of "hi, you might be in luck - the top bidder was a flake and bailed out so if you want it, then it's yours … otherwise it gets relisted"

 

I just looked at my eBay feedback (100%) and the last 6 months of me buying spare Omega parts, plus a Speedmaster 3572.50 from eLady For $3200 have been changed to private and the links to the BIN auctions are gone. From what you guys say above, that would make me look shady too, and I didn't make them private.

 

It's the seller who gets to choose if they want to allow bidders to remain anonymous to other eBayers. There are legitimate uses of this - like if you were selling stuff that might be embarrassing for the buyers, but even then, it's only part of their username and their feedback score that would be visible to others. One reason that eBay also lists is "high value items" but I'm not sure I agree that's legit.

https://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/sell/private.html

I'm now basically suspicious of anyone who does this without good reason.

 

Private bidder is just a way to hide shilling. There is no good reason why a legit honest seller would think it was necessary or desirable. Private bidders and second chance offers, 2 red flags.