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...
Yep, you're preaching to the choir. Watch sales move a lot faster on IG without the due diligence process.
As someone may have once said, "he who hesitates is lost." I have experienced versions of that story on several occasions, and try not to dwell on them too hard (even when I see the watch that I could have had for $xx selling later for 5 x $xx. Live and learn.
Sometimes I've been the one who jumped after one glance... other times I've been the one who hesitated and lost.
I think it's ok to jump when you're NOT dealing with uncomfortably high investment pieces and you're prepared to break even or lose some money if the item turns out to be not quite up to scratch ( obviously I'm not talking paying out silly money for replicas here!). You should have garnered enough relevant knowledge from reading around these pages to tell if something is the genuine article.Encyclopaedic knowledge of hands, cases, lugs, will take a lifetime. Redials and Frankens can sometimes prove a little more tricky. . Of course getting into Speedy, 321 chronos or Flightmaster territory is a very different proposition. I often wonder what I'd do if I find myself someday in say a backwoods pawn, or bric a brac shop with a potentially very valuable watch in my hands at a sweaty hands inducing price, but still way under market value. Nobody is answering my frantic posts on OF since the timezone means far fewer are online, and I've got about 20 minutes to decide whether to pull the trigger..... Watch collecting, buying, selling, ,upgrading, refocussing, like most other forms of collecting, can become very addictive and expensive. There are a bunch of folk here willing to forego family holidays, new cars, or even eating well to 'feed' their habit. Just don't spend more than you can afford to lose!
Sorry you missed out on this one...Mark IIIs in this condition are getting REALLY scarce, so when they pop up at a reasonable price you gotta pounce. So I did...It arrives tonight. @valkyrie_rider I will give you first dibs should I ever decide to sell.
Just forwarded details of one that was offered to me byba member here when I was on the searching for a MK2.
@Andy K it actually makes me feel *way* better to know it is going to a good home where it will be treated well. Thoughts of a new owner polishing it with a dremel to make it 'sparkly' or putting it on a Casio G-Shock rubber band " _ Because is dope, bro!" were terrifying me... If you ever decide to let it go, please let me know.
I promise not to have it refinished like this beauty: The fact that someone did this to a watch intentionally gives me nightmares.