WG111C
You might remember a few months ago I managed to pick up a ladies S/EL for my wife, which is a lovely little watch with a gorgeous red dial; needless to say seeing it on her wrist made me want one of my own, but the only one I could find was on eBay for £799 and I wasn't prepared to pay anything like that for one. So when another one popped up on eBay last week with a starting price of £350 I was immediately interested. Admittedly the condition wasn't comparable; the previous one had an immaculate bezel and dial, whereas this one has some light marks to the bezel and some patina to the lume, but the price difference was huge... assuming of course that I could get it for a sensible price.
I did a 'Spotlight On' post on the WG111C last October, and in it I pretty much said the same thing; that I couldn't justify spending £675 on one and that I'd rather get a chronograph instead. Fast forward thirteen months and I now have two S/EL quartz chronographs (CG1110 and CG1120), so finally it was time to get this one in the bag.
Picture from the eBay listing
The listing ended at 7:00PM on Monday night, so I did the usual thing of biding my time, fully expecting someone else to bid on it. With thirty seconds to go I entered my bid and watched the seconds ticking by, my finger hovering over the 'submit' button. I can't remember what my bid was but it was around about the £500 mark I think... I got a twitchy finger and submitted my bid a few seconds earlier than I wanted to, but it didn't matter as seemingly I was the only bidder. And so the red S/EL was mine for just £350 + £8.90 postage!
Oops, left the crown out for the photo...!
Of course, anyone who has purchased a watch from eBay knows that you should never count your chickens and so it was the usual 48hr wait to find out if I'd bagged a bargain, or picked a dud.. at least I didn't have the usual 'chronograph in the post' hassle to stress over this time! The watch arrived on Wednesday morning and I'm pleased to say it works perfectly. Not only that, but the seller had obviously been slightly cautious with their sizing; they claimed the watch would fit a 7.1/2" wrist (mine is 7.3/4") so I was slightly nervous about that, partly because my wife's S/EL had to be sent away for two weeks to have links taken out of it because our local watchmaker couldn't do it and partly because I knew I'd have to source another link... which isn't a massive problem, eBay can offer plenty of them, but it would mean a wait to wear the watch and more expense (probably another £50-60).
I took the risk because as far as I could see from the photographs this watch had one less link than my CG1110, but my CG1110 is all the way up on the micro-adjustment (which is at least one link's worth) so logic would suggest this one should fit. Thankfully I was bang on and the watch fitted my wrist straight out of the box. :)
The three hander S/EL is about the same overall diameter as the chronograph (certainly within 1mm), but the bezel is 2-3mm smaller and the case a few millimeters thinner, so it does wear slightly smaller. The lume is a little tarnished, but still retains a reasonable amount of charge for a watch of this age, while the rest of the dial and crystal look perfect. There's a few light marks on the bezel and clasp but nothing to get upset about and the date changes crisply. I've just noticed that the bezel doesn't turn... I'm not sure if that's because it's gnarled up or if someone's fixed it in place somehow, but if that's the only thing wrong with it, I'm happy with that. Better a fixed bezel than a spinning one I always say!
So there we are, overall I'm extremely happy with my latest acquisition, but now I'm wondering about getting a green dial WG1119 to match...
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