WAA1412.BA0760
Cash Converters / Wakefield, 21st July 2018
While I was scouring eBay for S/ELs recently I came across one that was available on the 'Cash Converters' website, and realised that they actually had quite a good selection of watches available, including quite a large number of TAG Heuers. One of the watches I saw on there was an Alter Ego with a pink dial, which was up for a very reasonable £280.
I showed it to my wife as she has been trying to make up her mind about the Alter Ego range for some time and in the end we decided to take a trip up to Wakefield to see it for ourselves and even if it turned out to be a dud, at least she'd get a better idea of how much she liked the design and could then make a better informed decision if she saw one on eBay or another pre-owned site.
CASH CONVERTERS WEBSITE PHOTO
The photos on the 'Cash Converters' website weren't brilliant and it mentioned that there was wear to the case and bracelet. One thing we don't generally have to worry about when buying watches for my wife is the bracelet length as she has absolutely tiny wrists, albeit this does mean she can't really take advantage of some of those great smaller men's watch bargains that are out there like the 80s F1s, which is a shame.
We arrived at the store just before opening time and then stood around waiting as they took their sweet time to open up... finally noticing the Alter Ego right in the centre of the window display. It looked decent, by no means 'mint' but it probably looked in better condition than we feared given the price.
CASH CONVERTERS WEBSITE PHOTO
This was a bit of a red herring, because while there were five WAA1412s on eBay at the time, every single one of them was in America. The cheapest of them was in much better condition and was selling for £445, while the others were supposedly 'NOS' and were priced in the thousands. When I got home I realised that one of them which was selling for £2050, was being offered by our old friends 'Infinite Shopping' - you may remember that name from a previous 'TAGs on eBay' post, where I mocked them mercilessly for selling literally everything for twice it's original list price!
Well they haggled and haggled and there was lots of 'I'll have to go and talk to the manager' type nonsense, and in the end my wife played her ace card and said she'd go away and think about it. Suddenly they didn't want her to leave without a sale and so they agreed to a price of £270, which wasn't much of a discount, but it was enough for my wife to make the deal.
When you actually start searching, you realise that although there are a fair number of Alter Egos about, there aren't that many pink ones. I think, considering the glass is clean, the scratches on the case and bracelet are only surface marks and the watch seems to be running fine - £270 was more than a good price, I think it was an excellent price. The only slight bummer is that the bracelet is a little stretched in places, but hopefully once it's sized it won't be too bad, and it's more round the back of the wrist and so not too noticeable. The bracelet is designed to stretch anyway, albeit not to the extent that you can get it on and off, as it has a butterfly clasp which leaves a nice clean uninterrupted bracelet effect.
As we were heading to the York Retail Outlet afterwards, and (obviously) the TAG Heuer shop - we thought it might be worth enquiring if they could size the strap. I don't think the Cash Converters chaps do that sort of thing and I certainly wouldn't trust them to start dismantling the Alter Ego! James in the TAG shop kindly took it away and asked for us, but because all the TAGs they now stock use pins in their bracelets they didn't have a small enough screwdriver in store to remove the very tiny screws that hold the bracelet together.
So the next day we took a trip into Leicester to see the man at 'In Time' who has changed the batteries and resealed all of my wife's TAGs for years. He squinted at the bracelet a bit and said he should be able to do it, but when my wife asked how much it would cost to get the watch polished, he suggested sending it back for a bracelet refurb for £90. Given the bargain price paid for the watch this was a bit of a no brainer and of course they could also remove the links at the same time so all the better.
It'll be about three weeks until the watch comes back, and I'm sure it will polish up great. I don't know how much they'll be able to do with the over-stretched links, given that some of it is on the fixed portion of the bracelet. But the 'In Time' man seemed to think they could sort it, so fingers crossed (I have my doubts, but we'll see). While we were there he showed us a Breitling that had just come back from refurbishment and he said that it was the worst bracelet he'd ever had back and honestly it looked brand new.
Annoyingly, because I wasn't expecting her to send it away, I never took any photographs in it's original state - all the photos here except the Cash Converters ones are just taken from the internet. So I won't be able to do any 'before' and 'after' picture comparisons. It wasn't what I'd call badly scratched, but it was lightly scratched all over and certainly didn't have the high polished look that it started out with.
Cash Converters then, another place to look for bargains... I'll certainly be keeping an eye on their website in future. I can't help but wonder though if they wouldn't be better shipping all their higher end stock to one store, either down South or somewhere near Manchester?
I think they could have maybe got their original asking price if it wasn't in a store next to a load of crappy watches (actually there was one half decent Tissot and a couple of others that weren't complete garbage), a £10 rowing machine and a wall full of DVDs selling for 20p a pop (I bought 'Source Code' as it happens...great film!). Still, if it keeps the prices down for the bargain hunter then who are we to complain?
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