View single post by YARGH

Posted: Mon May 26th, 2008 03:23 pm

Quote

Full Topic

YARGH

Joined:	Mon Mar 17th, 2008
Location:	New York, New York USA
Posts:	75
Status:	Offline

I pulled the trigger. As suspcious as the whole situation seemed, I ultimately didn't have as bad feeling about it after some E-mailing the guy as I did before. After I expressed some reservations with his money order request, he actually agreed to do it over Paypal (he had an account, but had never sold anything with it and thought it would be too much trouble to set up to receive funds).

I'm not getting as great a deal as it seems -- when the watch was new, 3-4 years ago (I asked the people at Limes to send me some specs of manufacturing history of this model, so I was able to come to a pretty good estimate of its age) it sold for $600-$700. Factors like inflation, an improving reputation of the brand, slight improvements to the construction, a better strap (with a deployment) and a much weaker dollar all contribute to the price of this watch being nearly $1200 today. So instead of saying I got a $1200 watch for $400, you could go the other way say that I got a 4-year old $600 watch for $400. If you just factor in the weakened dollar and inflation, I'd say I got an $800 watch for $400, albeit a used one, and one with no box, no papers, and no known history. Which probably isn't far from what it should be (the seller did absorb the insured UPS and Paypal fees). Assuming I ever get it, of course, but I think that I will. And the pictures looked really good. In this sense, I don't think it as a case of "too good to be true" at all, but probably a pretty fair deal all around, considering the risk I assumed.

For the time being, this looks like the only way I'm going to be buying Swiss or German watches -- the dollar/euro thing (which has been brought up on this forum before) is just making it cost-prohibitive (value-prohibitive, really) to buy them new. Perhaps a Russian will be the next acquisition.