BUYING EXPERIENCE: A Guest Post from Jim Dollares

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You may remember my post entitled 'Trying to Send a Watch to Sweden', but what was it like to be the recipient of the parcel? Our man in Sweden Jim Dollares is here to tell you all about it:


Sending a big chunk of money to a stranger?

Have you ever experienced feeling that you know someone you have never met? Spending a lot of time online in the watch community actually has given me a handful of online friends. People I have never met but kind of feel that I know and trust. Odd isn’t it? Most of my watch related time online is of course spent on calibre11.com, the greatest forum in the world, and it is also there I have gotten to know Robert (the guy behind this excellent blog, of which I am a daily reader). When writing this I am wearing my new Carrera Heuer 01 in titanium, an impulse buy I am completely in love with, that would not have happened unless Robert would have been so kind to purchase it on my behalf and ship it from the UK to Sweden where I live.

“Are you crazy?” my friends and family kept asking me, looking at me as if I was about to flush
£2,300 down the toilet never to see it again. Not for a single moment I felt that I could not trust that the watch would arrive as promised, after all, it was one of my oldest online watch buddies we were talking about!

The trouble of making a decision

Sometimes I wonder if I have a problem. So much of my time in a day is spent thinking about watches, movements, brands, straps, designs and so on. I save money every month for the next purchase and this has lead to something similar to obsession with me always looking for what the next purchase should be. I am sure readers of this blog can relate, but during fall this actually started to ruin the hobby a bit for me. The trouble of making up my mind put me in a situation where almost all I could think of was “if I go for that one, when will I be able to get the other one, will I regret not picking that one…” and I could not make a purchase. I went to a couple of AD’s multiple times, money wired to the debit card ready to be spent but when in the store I just could not make the purchase.

Then suddenly something happened! Robert posted about the new stock in Bicester Village and oh boy, the prices on Carrera Heuer01’s were insanely good! The Heuer01 had been on my radar for a long time and I have tried them on multiple times. I always thought that one day I would pick up the black dial, stainless steel version with black ceramic bezel, as it turns out I ended up with  something completely different (and so much better!). Like so many other days, I was sitting in the office reading Robert’s blog, this time scrolling through the alternatives and offerings from Bicester. Again, the problem of making up my mind. I Googled some photos and looked at some Youtube videos, telling myself to get it together and just make up my mind. The prices were so good that I could basically buy the watch and sell it with a profit, compared to the prices in Sweden these were more than 50% off! The same day I quickly decided to go for the brown skeleton version on brown alligator leather (CAR201U).

So I reached out to Robert, asking him kindly if he could do me the favor of buying the watch for me and send it to Sweden. Luckily he was happy to help! He reached out to Bicester and they reserved the watch for me. A day or two passed and I realized that I would probably not be happy with a skeleton version. I reached out to Robert again, asking if he could check if the grey titanium version on rubber was still available and as you know by now it sure was.

Seeing the watch in reality

I got the message from DHL and now I knew when the watch would arrive. To make sure that I would not miss this important package I spent the day working from home at my kitchen table, with a good view of the driveway in front on my house. When I finally opened it I was blown away by how insanely good looking the watch is! Polished rhodium plated details of a grey sunburst dial, unlike anything I had ever seen before. Winding the Heuer01 movement was even better than I remembered, pure pleasure with a super smooth feel to it and a precise feeling to the chronograph pushers. The rubber strap feels amazing and the titanium folding clasp suits the luxurious watch perfectly.

This is the third Tag Heuer in my collection and thus far it feels like it has a good chance of becoming my favorite watch. A nice touch making it perfect would probably be to suit it with the Tag Heuer brown “alligator on rubber” strap (same one used on the brown skeleton Heuer 01), but that is a story for another day, I guess. Big thanks again to Robert for helping me with this purchase and keep up the great work with the blog!

Greetings from Sweden //Jim