Hello everyone,

I have been a succesfull seller on ebay. But when i was not very experienced on ebay, i was going to list an vintage Omega watch, so i asked my friend to list it for me on auction. The main reason was, he had more feedbacks than me and and i was sure that it was going to be easier than i would do and actually it worked. It was sold around $2.000. I shipped the watch to my friend for him to ship it to US. By the way, i'm from Turkey and my friend is as well. He shipped it to they buyer but it was seized by US custom. My friend declared the value like $50 by not asking my opinion and they thought this watch was fake. It had not box and papers. Then i reached to the custom office in NY with a lot of difficulties and they asked some evidences to able to deliver it back to us. "Back to us" because buyer had already asked for refund for the watch for it was not delivered to him in 30 days. So we refunded to the buyer.

There is a very nice guy at custom office who really took care about my issue with great effort. I had a lot of communication problems because i was not the seller, my friend was, so i was not the legal owner for that reason, but i had to be taking care of this issue by myself. At the last point, i made my friend write a petition about why this watch was not fake. We also wrote that Ryan Gossling even wore the similar watch in La La Land Movie

It's been one year and we are still waiting the watch to be returned to us. Hopefully one day it is returned back to me. Just wanted to share this experience with you. Thanks for reading. Here are the pictures of this beautiful watch. There is a missing part on case back. I think it was stolen or lost.

 

Red gold cap Constellation on matching Beads of Rice bracelet?

I feel your pain!

 

It was in mint condition.

 

If the medallion is missing, I don't think it qualifies as mint condition. Hope it turns up.

 

I meant the watch's condition is mint. It's not a mint watch withouth the medallion for sure like you said. A watchmaker let me know he had one just after i sold this watch. I was not lucky. I'm not thinking to sell it again if i have it back again Thank you for your wish, hope so.

 

Lesson learned

 

Yes! Definietly.

 

Nice case and dial! (and BOR)
Such a shame about the missing medallion.
Best of luck getting it back
Edit: when I read the thread title I thought we were going to be looking at a manky movement

 

Thank you very much for your good wishes. Crossed fingers.

 

Have they given any reason for holding the watch? The declared value issue is obviously a problem but one would think that there would just be a penalty assessment of some kind and then the watch would be released. Just a thought but maybe if the watch is returned you should find a buyer now and send the watch directly so you won't have the same issue next time.

 

Yes, the reason was; Omega and some many brands are in contact with US custom. ( maybe with some other countries' custom too ) If custom officer sees something risky, they have the right to make a research on it and hold the package to understand if it's a fake item or not, because it's written $50 on it. They must be thinking how comes an Omega watch cost $50. So they asked some evidences. I contacted to Omega Turkey with the photos of the watch but i was told they don't have the right to make a letter about it's authenticity if they don't have it in their hand. So; we are asked by the US custom to write a petition for why they should release the package, so we wrote it and sent it to them. We also sent all ebay and paypal documents to show that buyer paid around $2.000. Now It's been more than one year and last month i got a respond from them that my issue is still in process. Actually i was told that, it would take so long once this process had started. They may think it's authentic and return to us or they can just destroy it or sell it to somewhere like where kinda stuff are sold to.

 

Here are some wrist shots of the watch. I had taken these photos while i was measuring up to which size of wrist it could fit. I know they are not very good and sorry for that but if it returns back to me, i'll take great photos of it;

 

Beautiful watch. I generally only like divers and chronos, but this watch is too cool.

 

Thanks!

 

Did you use DHL to ship it, They are thieves in the United States!!!

 

I personally use Dhl for the watches and parts i sell on ebay and actually never ever had a problem. All my transactions gone smoothly, but my friend used Fedex for this one.

 

I'm sorry you are having this problem. International buying and selling opens up whole new markets for buyers and sellers, but with these potential risks

 

If you have a relationship with this watchmaker perhaps he could get a notarized statement of his belief of the genuine watch based on the images? I'm not very knowledgeable on this.

 

Thanks but that will not work out. As you can imagine, this can be used in bad ways by everyone who is in my situation. The only way could have it from Omega but they told that they can't do it if they don't have the watch in their hands.