BUYING EXPERIENCE: TAG Heuer 2000 Series Quartz Watch

 

WK1113.BA0311

Way back in 2004 (IIRC) I bought my wife a WK1313.BA0313 blue dial 2000 Series from Goldsmiths. It was her first 'new' TAG Heuer and she loved it to bits, indeed she still does and despite now having a sizeable collection herself I am quite sure it is perhaps the one she holds most special. Every now and again I have to change the dates on her watches and like her ceramic Formula 1 every time I get to examine it close up it reminds me what a great looking watch it is and consequently makes me want one of my own.

The problem has been up until now that every time I saw a WK1113 in good condition the price was more than I really wanted to pay. It's a nice watch, but it's not something I'd want to pay £4-500 for and that seemed to be the going rate, at least for watches being sold within the UK. The other hesitation I had was that the bracelet is similar to the one I had on my 2000 Multigraph and I did not get on with that bracelet at all...

I do remember a while back enquiring with TAG Heuer if they could still offer the blue rubber strap that the WK1113 was sold on back in the day, but unfortunately it had been discontinued, which means the only 'stock' option would be to put it on the black rubber (like I did with my Multigraph) and I didn't really want to do that to be honest.

Still, I spied a WK1113 on eBay at a very low price and decided to give it a try. At least if I bought it 'cheap' if I ended up admitting defeat and selling I could probably make my money back, and probably simply listing it with some decent photos would have immediately upped the price. The photos really were quite poor, taken from a distance, only shown in the box etc... so it was a bit of a risk, but I figured that would most likely keep the price down and it seems like it did.

When I found the watch it was only just bidding over £200, but as time wore on it started to climb a little bit and when it hit £260 I decided I didn't really want to spend more than about £300 on it. The auction ended during the day so I could easily bid and with a few seconds left I made a bid of £305.48. I hoped it would actually end up at £280 or something, but in the end it told me I had won it for £305.48! Looking at the bid history I had pitched my bid perfectly, my nearest competitor had bid £302, smartly just exceeding the £300 threshold, but not by quite enough.

The watch took a few days to come, and when it arrived I was really pleased to find the poor photographs weren't hiding anything nasty. There is one very light scratch to the bezel and the clasp and bracelet have some evidence of desk rash, but apart from that it's pretty much perfect, I didn't even need the two spare links included as the watch fitted me perfectly. The watch also came with its original green barrel box, outer box, booklet and warranty card (which originated in Mexico, of all places) which dated the watch to 1999, so at £302.48 I think I scored a bit of a bargain really. 

The day it came I wore it pretty much all day and while it did dig in my wrist a bit (the clasp is just poorly designed, the sides are lower than the middle meaning that the two edges press into your skin at every opportunity) it wasn't as bad as the one on the Multigraph. I could live with this, so quite what the difference is I don't know... maybe they aren't quite the same in some regard?

One thing I have noticed is that my blue dial is not the same as my wife's, it is a different shade of blue, a bit paler and it has a sparkly texture to it that catches the light. I'm really pleased I won this one as a late era 2000 Series is something that has been missing from my collection for a while and one I wanted to tick off. Yes I have the Multigraph, but that's kind of a unique piece that stands apart from the 2000 Series as a whole.

I do feel like I have gone a bit mad with my purchasing lately, so I can see this being my last new piece for a while (except for the lume-dial classic Formula 1 that's currently winging its way to me from Japan of course)... but after that, almost certainly! Unless, you know, something completely irresistible comes along.