Sad experience selling 1920s Italian navy officer's watch

I was selling watches at a show and on day 1 a nice looking chap comes past and falls in love with my 1920s Universal Genève single button chrono Nodo Savoia Italian navy officer's watch.

He had obviously never seen anything like it and couldn't get it out of his head.

So the next day he comes past with his (gorgeous) wife and after a few more inspections, they decide she will buy it for him as a birthday present.

On the next day, he returns and asks if anything could be done to get it working please! So I checked it out and found a suddenly broken pivot on a (pre-incabloc) balance staff. He didn't know what was wrong and wasn't blaming me for anything, cos presumably he had been told that if a pivot was working when he bought it, it was unlikely to be my responsibility.

So he claimed to know where he might get it fixed. Nevertheless I knew how much any repairer would charge to put a new balance staff in and how unlikely it was that anyone would gurarantee any such repair without doing a full service so I offered to get my repairer to do it.

But I never heard from him again