376.508
My wife has long been drawn to the yellow and black 380.508 ladies quartz Formula 1, but finding one in good condition at a reasonable price has been a bit of a challenge. She's also a bit dubious about the yellow plastic strap, a) because she has extremely pale skin and b) because she feels like it will probably get grubby quite quickly. As I own a 380.513 I can only agree with the second point, all the light coloured straps are a bit prone to 'grubbiness' unfortunately... indeed mine arrived on a black strap (which I changed back), which is definitely more 'practical' but it does lessen the impact of the watch's colour scheme somewhat.
An alternative is the black and yellow 376.508, which unlike the 380.508 comes with an uncoated steel case and on a black plastic strap as standard. While the scheme as a whole isn't as 'in your face' the yellow on the bezel and the hands is particularly acidic and looks fantastic against the black background. My wife was looking at this one on eBay with a view to buying it (from Japan) and since her birthday wasn't too far in the future I offered to buy it for her as a birthday present.
As the auction finished at 5AM GMT, I left a bid of approximately £200 or maybe slightly more (I can't actually remember the exact figure) but come the morning I had won the auction for the starting price of £122 plus £24 postage and packaging (with the potential for another £25 in import taxes, although in actual fact this did not arise).
The watch arrived in about 7 days I think, once again well packaged by the seller (Spirit*Age) and looked fantastic on arrival but for one small detail; the glass had a noticeable scratch to it at around the ten position. This we were aware of from the detailed pictures on the auction listing, but we were hoping that it would be a lot less noticeable than it turned out to be. It didn't really help that otherwise the watch looked pretty immaculate, which only served to make the scratch more incongruous to the eye.
Clearly I couldn't give it to her like this, so... with time being of the essence I took it to a local watch repair store called Timpsons. I had previously not had a happy time with them when I sent my black SEL chrono for servicing, but I figured that changing the crystal was a simple job that I could trust them with. To be fair, I was told I would get a quote within two weeks and I actually received it within three days! The price was £125, which seemed a little steep to me, but probably isn't really - it's just that relative to the price of the watch itself... well, ha, it cost more than the watch didn't it!
Still, fair play to them, within two weeks I had the watch back in my hand and it looked superb and came with a test certificate stating it had passed its pressure test. I also noticed that the old crystal came back in a TAG Heuer branded blister pack, so they clearly used the genuine replacement glass too. This is making me want to send them my orange/grey and yellow/black F1s for crystals too, both of them are scratched and annoying me more each time I wear them. I may have to get my Pilot crown attended to first though, since it is barely even catching now...
So yes, another winner from Japan - I can't really complain about the scratch as I knew about it, it just turned out to be a lot more visible than I'd hoped. And at least I got the watch back in plenty of time for my wife's birthday in April. She hasn't seen the watch yet, but I'm sure she's going to be more than happy with it, it really is in incredible condition for its age (approximately 25-30 years).
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