SPOTLIGHT ON: TAG Heuer SLR Automatic Regulator

 

CAD5110.FC6177

You may remember that a few weeks ago I posted my 'History of the SLR' and the very first watch mentioned in that article was this one. Available only to those purchasing a Mercedes Benz SLR supercar for several hundred thousand pounds, the watch itself was not cheap either ($14,000 I believe), so you can imagine my surprise when I came across one listed on eBay with a starting price of just £535.

Now usually I would have run a mile because that just doesn't add up somehow, but looking at the (not terribly brilliant and not terribly many) pictures I concluded that the watch was almost certainly genuine since I have never seen a fake CAD5110 and being a regulator (a watch where the hour and minute hands are separated) it would not be easy for a faker to make this particular watch anyway. On the downside the seller had (0) feedback, which was not a good start to say the least!

So I watched and I waited and I ummed and I aaahed. On the one hand this watch isn't really my cup of tea, but if I could secure it for sensible money wouldn't it be a majestic piece to crown my TAG Heuer collection? I mean this is a heavy hitter for sure, perhaps only surpassed in the TAG Heuer stakes by the 6000 Series watches gifted to those fortunate enough to take delivery of the original McLaren F1 supercar... but still the doubts persisted.

The bidding was painfully slow and it wasn't until the day the auction ended that I saw any movement at all. It crept up in £20 increments until it was in the mid £600s and I found myself thinking that I could not let this go and that if it sold for £700 or something I would be kicking myself forever.

Thankfully (because I didn't really want to buy it), at the last minute, there was a small flurry of bidding and the watch closed out just a shade over £2100 - which meant it had breached the £2000 threshold and was eligible to be authenticated by eBay's pre-owned watch scheme. But still nothing suggested the watch wasn't genuine, except maybe that the box it is shown in isn't the right one, or at least it isn't the epic box that the SLR originally came in. Could it be that spare pieces were sold off later in slightly less epic boxes, absolutely. 

My concern really was how did this watch come to be sold in the first place and why on earth was it being offered on eBay for such a lowly price? After all a quick Google shows that the market price for this watch is much more like £8000+ and even Watchfinder would give you more than £2000 for it I'm sure. Something just didn't add up. Why not stick it in a proper watch auction?

Well the auction finished and I wondered if the buyer had got himself a bargain or not. If the watch needs servicing then it will surely have to go back to Switzerland and how much would that cost? It costs something like £300 to service a basic quartz chronograph so who knows! It also crossed my mind that the watch could be stolen and if it was then the buyer would not be covered...

Oddly enough, the watch reappeared on eBay a few days later, with some additional text in the description talking about how the watch is genuine and any buyer is welcome to have it authenticated and the only reason the seller would take it back would be if the buyer could produce some paperwork saying the watch was a fake.

I don't know what made me do it, but after the auction finished I checked out the bidding history only to find that there was some very dubious bid retracting going on. Could it be that the seller was bidding and retracting bids to try to 'shill' the price up? Another red flag that this seller was not to be trusted.

I still believe the watch is genuine, that has never been the issue for me, so I continued to watch the listing until it got up to £920 with two days to go, whereupon it disappeared from my watch list and the site. A very strange affair to be sure... and one which left many unanswered questions. Maybe the seller got an offer off-site, or maybe he just over estimated the price eBay could realise for him and decided to take it somewhere more appropriate.