I'm unsure if this should go on 'General' discussion or 'Vintage', but here it goes... I think we all been there... but I've experienced it this weekend and it was quite painful. Imagine spending months in the pursue of that special vintage timepiece and only finding horribly over polished cases, rusted calibers, damaged dials or missing the original bracelet (sometimes all of the it!). Then in a Friday night, you find the one: unpolished, perfect dial, pristine caliber and original bracelet. Could it be real? Let's do the due diligence and ask the basic questions first (i.e. keeping good time? photo of it in a timegrapher?) before pulling the trigger. You wake up the following day excited to check for a reply... and nothing! A bit more research and you discover the seller has a public account (i.e. instagram) and you decided to contact them, who knows? Same result: no replies. Meanwhile, you do the homework: compare photos of the watch with known good references, try to find if it has a service dial or replaced/wrong hands, etc. All checks, the watch is perfect! You rationalize that being an weekend, odds are that the seller is just not online (who *else* would be searching the web for vintage watches during the Friday night?). :-D To keep yourself busy, you start to look for better and new bracelets that would complement the watch. You find room in your watch box for the upcoming grail, just being a matter of few days before it joins the family. The following day comes the reply: ' _ Thanks for the interest, but the watch was just sold.' ... To you my love, the one who got away but I will always remember you...
Sorry for you loss...however... ...I think this was a mistake. Too much ‘kicking of the tyres’ on a superb condition watch where, even though not the most highly sought, in this condition there is undoubtedly a queue of buyers who have done similar due diligence to you and come up with the same conclusion (albeit without ‘kicking the tyres’)...
Almost same story here. Was looking for a specific watch for my father as a gift, finally found one via a semi local shop with an Instagram. I message them to ask all the questions and see of I can reserve the piece (Instagram post said it would he posted to their website soon) Seller was really well spoken and professional, answered all my questions but informed me that..... he would not sell it to me and I had to wait for it to hit the website so its fair game for all his customers. Fair enough, so I wait. It never goes up for sale. Weeks later I ask about it and I'm told it sold before making it to the website. Well WTF!. Now I noticed the same seller is posting more inventory to Instagram and clearly saying to message him to buy before he lists certain items to the website. I went back to our private messages and he deleted portions of the convo about me asking to buy the piece in advance. Lesson learned, I wont do business with him now.