WG141C
It's not unusual for me to send my wife links to watches for sale on eBay, and most of the time I get a fairly non-committal shrug of the shoulders, even to watches that I think are quite nice. Often times it's because she's already got a blue dial (but you haven't got a blue dial Alter Ego have you?), so in that respect I must admit my wife is a little more... careful about assembling her collection than I am. I'm the greedy pig who wants every TAG Heuer in every different colour and style, no way would she countenance three 2000 Exclusives for example!
But this was a different kettle of fish. I knew she had mixed feelings about the S/EL, but that partly stemmed from her dislike of two-tone (my S/EL is a white dial two-tone chrono) but that changed when I showed her a photo of a red dial piece a while back, so when I came across this WG141C I thought she might be interested, especially with a starting price of £300.
The listing had a buy it now price of £450 and my wife was a little bit tempted to pay that and secure it, but a little bit of digging exposed the fact that the watch had already failed to sell once and had been relisted, so instead I suggested she bid £300 straight away to prevent anyone gazumping her in the meantime (a bid received removes the BIN option), and then make a final bid right at the last second of the auction.
Original eBay listing photograph
So for the next three days we watched and waited, fully expecting someone to bid in the last minute or two, and in preparation I asked my wife to decide on a final bid, the absolute maximum she would be willing to pay, or perhaps a price above which she was willing to lose the watch if you want to look at it like that.
She decided that £450 was probably about as far as she wanted to go, so I typed in £457.92 and hovered over the keyboard until there was about 15 seconds remaining. I punched it in and watched the seconds tick away... and, nothing. This hardly ever happens when I'm trying to buy a watch, there's usually someone else doing exactly the same thing, but when it comes to women's watches it seems like a much easier sport!
So the auction ended and my wife had her red dial S/EL for just £300. What a bargain! I noticed that the seller (Cleokaz) had put the postage as £3.48 First Class and I contacted them to ask if they would send it Special Delivery if I paid extra. The seller assured me they always intended to send it that way anyway and no further payment was necessary. I was more worried about the item being lost in the post than anything, so that was immensely reassuring.
Two days later and the watch arrived, extremely well packed (no original box or papers admittedly) but sent in a large box with a foam insert designed for watches and it really is in quite incredible condition. The lume is weak, but this watch is 20-25 years old so I wouldn't expect it to be great, not to mention the lume coverage is miniscule as the dial is only about 15mm across so you can imagine how small the hour markers and hands are on this one. When you really zoom in to the photograph you can see there are some scratches to the bezel, but realistically the condition is superb.
The bracelet is pretty short, but looks to be about the same length as the green Formula 1 my wife picked up a while back, so I'm not panicking over links just yet. I bet if anything she'll want it making smaller* as her wrists are tiny, and fortunately there's some micro adjustment available on the clasp so we might be able to avoid the hassle of having to visit someone who knows what they are doing with the S/EL bracelet (seriously, don't let just anyone loose on your S/EL or Link, it's not as straightforward as most watch bracelets).
Ebay buying can be fraught with disappointment, but so far this is another winner and I'm sure my wife is going to be extremely happy with this one. Maybe it really is time for me to finally do that post about her steadily growing collection...
*Sure enough it needs links taking out!
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