BUYING EXPERIENCE: TAG Heuer Kirium Quartz Ladies Watch

WL1316

I started watching this one on eBay a few weeks ago, when it was bidding at less than £100. My wife has been toying with the idea of a Kirium for quite a while but the cheapest she's found them has been about £280 for one in good enough condition. Indeed, while ladies watches are generally cheaper than men's, two other WL1316 on eBay at the moment are pushing the £400 mark, which is too much really.

I eventually secured this one for £201, and quickly received an email from the seller telling me the watch would be on it's way asap. Sure enough the following Monday I received the watch; admittedly not in the best packaging, it was inside a small, fragile cardboard box inside a jiffy bag but it survived all the same. First impressions are pretty good; the bracelet has some stretch to it for sure, but as my wife's wrists are very small that might be a good thing as my Kirium bracelets are very rigid and I feel this might work better for her comfort wise. The polished links are a bit scratched up, but I will give it a polish before I give it to her and get the worst of that sorted (as I did with my own CL1112) and at least the whole bracelet is polished so I don't have to worry about mixed finishes.

The clasp seems pretty sound, which is a relief as the Kirium clasps do wear as they are designed to be 'pressure fit', and the fold-over safety clasp is solid and will provide a good back-up even if the main clasp does eventually wear (as my blue quartz chrono has) and start to loosen somewhat. The watch looks to keep good time and I'm told it's had the battery replaced in the last six months so that should be good for the foreseeable future as well. I'm looking forward to cleaning this one up and getting ready to spring a surprise on my wife sometime in the near future!

These photos aren't great unfortunately, but I think it's clear that there's some significant improvement in the finish of the bracelet from when I received the watch and since I took these pictures I've done some more work on it and given it a polish with Autosol and it's now looking a lot, lot better.

The dial is really nice, I'm sure she's going to love that metallic blue finish, and the watch works perfectly (so perhaps some advantage to keeping it aside for a little while) although I'm definitely going to have to get that bracelet shortened for her as she has the smallest wrists imaginable (I reckon she's going to need six links out of her new Aquaracer when she finally gets it). The only mild annoyance is that the bezel is very stiff to turn, but since I doubt my wife has ever turned the bezel on any of her watches, I don't think it will be too much of a problem!