FEATURE: A trip to Bicester Village and Some Exciting News...

It's been a few months since I've been to Bicester Village, a lot has happened in the meantime (not all of it good), but things seem to be getting back on an upward swing now and it was interesting to visit again and see what's about.

There are four main watch stores at Bicester Village, first there's 'Hour Passion' - which sells Rado, Tissot, Hamilton, Longines, Mido and a lot of Swatch. Truth be told I didn't even notice the enormous Swatch stand so I didn't look at it! I really don't like Hamiltons much, in fact the only watches in that store that appealed to me on any level where some of the cooler looking Tissots.

Hour Passion

Then there's the Mont Blanc store, which as you might expect has some watches, some pens and some other things. There were some cool watches in there, but they tend to be at the higher end of the price range. I'm not so convinced by their more affordable products really, just not my style. Still worth a look though...

Mont Blanc

The next store is called l'Atelier, which sells brands such as Baume & Mercier, Maurice Lacroix, Corum, Oris and Chopard. Chopard's 'Sport Happy' watches can't fail to amaze, since they cost about £2500 yet look like they cost about £50 from Argos. Also in l'Atelier they have the outrageously expensive Porsche Design watch reduced from £125,000 to about £55,000. It's huge, it's hideous and you can't help but come to the conclusion that for £125,000 you could have a very, very nice Porsche sportscar! Still I guess someone who's going to spend that sort of money on a watch probably already has a very nice selection of cars, so I suppose it's a moot point!

l'Atelier

As I mentioned in a previous post, my wife pulled the trigger on a beautiful Oris Artelier Skeleton, and I tried on the Maurice Lacroix Pontos S Extreme, before we moved on to our final destination. Oh, but while we were in there, one of the guys we were talking to told us that the other week in the TAG store they had been selling off all the Zenith stock at half price. Sure enough when we arrived in the TAG Heuer store there was no sign of the Zenith stock, which is fine by me since I don't really care for the Zenith range that much. 

An old photo still showing the Zenith cabinet.

There was a good selection of stock in the TAG shop today, including all the watches shown below.

Had a good chat with the sales assistant, who was a lot more informed than some of her predecessors (remember the one who told me the date on the Monaco 24 was the hours for the chronograph?), even though she couldn't make the Calibre S Fernando Alonso watch behave itself.

Also in the TAG Heuer shop we saw the Heuer leather jacket, which I can't help thinking I would feel a complete berk wearing (I didn't look at the price on that). Also some belts and wallets... the wallets look nice but even reduced they are still about £135, which seems a lot of money to me. But maybe that's me just being a tightwad?

Oh , I nearly forgot about the Heuer bag as well. Pretty cool, but no doubt it's still hundreds of pounds even discounted. Still, if you have a yen for a Heuer bag you probably won't find one cheaper anywhere else. Next time I go I will make a greater effort to remember everything and take more notice of the prices.

Unlike my wife, I left Bicester Village empty handed, but I had one eye on eBay and a particular item that was finishing on Monday. Which leads me on to my exciting news...

I am currently awaiting delivery of this TAG Heuer Microtimer, which I won for £684. This is the watch that I listed at number ten in my top ten TAGs post last month (although I might have to redo that already since I have already changed my mind about at least two of the entries!) and I'm excited to get my hands on it.

With the Microtimer, I feel like I need to get hold of one and just see how it feels. I would dearly like to have tried one on first but I've never even seen one, so I decided I'm just going to have to suck it and see. My main worries are about the case and the level of scratches it might have, but since it looks like a mint piece is going to cost another £500 or so... perhaps I will learn to live with it. Or not. Maybe I will love the watch and decide to trade up for a perfect example?

Or maybe it would be possible to get the watch refinished by TAG themselves (if necessary)? 

On the other hand, if I get it and it's a huge disappointment, the seller does accept returns... in any case it will make for an interesting subject to post about here.