WAJ1113.BA0870
Well there I was minding my own business, wondering if Watches & Wonders was going to bring any surprises or indeed if I would actually buy any watches in 2024... when eBay sent me an email telling me to check out 127 new TAG Heuers on their website. Now this is hardly an uncommon event and I don't know what made me click on it this time, but half way down the page I spied something I hadn't been actively looking to buy, but which had always been at the back of my mind ever since I first saw it six or seven years ago. At the same time it was something I really wasn't prepared to pay top dollar for, simply because I already had the exact same watch but with a light grey dial (and let's not forget the 2021 orange dial Formula 1).
The auction had a couple of days to go and the watch was ridiculously low, like £250 or something. So I placed a cheeky bid of £290 and was outbid straight away. Okay, time to sit back and see how it plays out. I mean clearly this watch wasn't going to sell for £300 or anything close, but no sense in driving the price up too early.
Annoyingly the watch was scheduled to finish at 8:20AM on Good Friday (a public holiday here in the UK) and so I had to think long and hard about whether I wanted to get up early on a day off, or place a bid right before I went to bed and hope for the best. In the end, I decided to leave it up to fate. Maybe it was a good thing anyway, if I'd have got up and convinced myself I had to have it I probably would have bid more than I really wanted to.
So at 1AM on Thursday night I placed a bid of £717, pretty much resigned to the fact that I probably wouldn't win the watch at that price. I bought my grey dial (admittedly 6 years ago) for £950 and generally the prices of these has never really moved significantly. A quick scan on Chrono 24 suggest well over £1000 for the rarer orange dial which reinforced my belief that I was firing laughably low and probably wouldn't even get close to winning...
The next morning I woke up at 8:50AM and thought well, okay... auction's finished and I probably haven't won. Never mind, eh. But then I checked my emails and saw that I had an email from eBay telling me I had won the auction and that I should pay now to complete my purchase. Wow! Okay then. But how much did I actually end up paying? Turns out I got the watch for the hilariously low sum of £550. Oh wow. Bargain time!
I honestly think the seller made some schoolboy errors with this listing. First, I don't think auctions are a good idea for watches (unless you need the money very quickly), much better to list as 'Buy it Now' and to invite offers... and secondly, if you are going to do an auction, don't finish it first thing in the morning on a public holiday! Also, the pictures weren't that amazing, and the bracelet looked scratched to hell in the photos... but I've been here before, the times I've bought watches that looked scratched in photos and then they turn up looking okay. And, knowing that the bracelet on these is brushed I was confident I could tart it up if necessary.
Ebay reckoned 28 other people were chasing this watch, but I wonder how many were pulled in by the super low starting price and who fell by the wayside once the watch reached £400? Also with newer models available on the platform for well under £1000 I think that perhaps limited the amount of casual interest, albeit as I've said repeatedly on here the chances of getting a fake is exponentially higher if you go for newer models that are too cheap to be true. Then of course there's the fact that a lot of people aren't flush with cash right now, I've certainly been holding off selling some watches as I don't think it's a particularly good time to sell right now.
So far I've written all this on the day I won the auction, and now fourteen hours after the fact I'm wondering if I did a good thing or a bad thing. On the one hand it's a cool looking watch and the price was nuts so I think I would have kicked myself if I had seen it had gone for so little and hadn't made a bid. On the other hand, do I actually need another orange dial watch, or another WAJ Aquaracer? No not really. But on the upside, if I do eventually decide not to keep it then I think I will be able to get my money back and probably even make a small profit if I present it well and list it properly.
Oddly enough, when I told my wife that I won the auction for a new watch her response was... 'But you already have an orange watch.' Which I must admit irked me a little. While this is indeed true, I honestly don't see why that matters. I mean she never said that when I bought my eighth black dial watch, or my fifth blue dial watch so why is that a thing? If she'd said 'but you already have six Aquaracers' that I could have understood... but anyway, I guess I can see her point.
I finally received the watch at my work on Thursday and as I was expecting it I wore my grey dial WAJ so that I could compare them. To my tired old eyes they look absolutely identical, so I assume it is okay after all. Either that or it's a spectacularly good fake (I know my older one is okay because that went back to TAG Heuer years ago). The box it arrived in is a later period than the watch and the booklet it came with isn't correct for the watch, but this doesn't prove anything much. The warranty card (stamped Las Vegas Outlet) does match the watch though and is dated 2013, which is about right. I noticed later that the box actually has a Watchfinder sticker on it, I wonder if this watch went through WF at some point or if it was just the box? 🤔
The clasp and bracelet are a little bit scratched up, but nowhere near as bad as expected and I can probably clean them up quite easily. More pressing is the need to put three links back into the bracelet - the previous owner must have had a tiny wrist! Given my recent adventures in link removal I think I will take it to a local store and ask them to do it for me (Timsons did this for me for a very reasonable £12.95 while I did my shopping). I could also look into getting a rubber strap, though knowing TAG Heuer it will cost a good bit, especially as it needs special end links...
I really like the orange dial (even though it is my second one...) and it really suits this chunky style of watch well, especially with the black rubber bezel insert. The only problem with it really is that now I've had the bracelet sorted and I can actually wear it I kind of wonder why I would ever choose to wear the grey dial one. Oh dear... I think the old stalwart just became surplus to requirements, which is a bit sad. But still, I always wanted the orange one, I guess it was only a matter of time until it happened. Okay then, next stop eBay!
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