Who Watches the Watchmen (Our Chit Chat Thread)

good write up there of what sounds like a nice day.Northern Ireland in general is a lovely place.It always nice to fit in some activities for yourself while the rest of the family are doing their thing .

Not surprised to hear Nico has stuff going on in the US , Roman from luxury bazaar seems to be very active with him since he distanced himself from timepiece gentleman ( Not sure if right name - The Texas lads with the recent drama)He is entertaining and seems to be living the lifestyle with the fast cars and private jets.I’ve seen the Amsterdam watch company complain about him a few times , not sure if Justified or not .

I apologise if this has been discussed before but, if it has I missed it. Has anyone here had a look at www.relleb.com yet for selling their watches?

It's a service that offers a marketplace, authentication , escrow and insured pick up and shipping to/from buyers. I've only had a quick scan but it seems a very viable alternative to Chrono and eBay. I see there's at least 1 Irish seller on their with a polar Explorer 2, so someone's using it.

What say ye lads?

I know @IrishPlayer has had recent poor experience with shipping from Japan, but, anyone else got any info from recent experience?

I'm looking at a couple of watches and Japan is offering serious value (even including VAT) versus the US and EU. I have no issue waiting for it, but don't want to end up in a cycle of returns or shipping holds. I know the seller probably has plenty of shipping experience but any additional info re:TARIC that could simplify the flow would be appreciated?

Which explorer?

apart from the obvious answer of none. I was quite taken with the Rolex explorer I tried on last week, 39mm mk1 dial. Question I have is would you go mark 1 or mark 2 dial? Think the lads in pride and pinion mentioned the mark 1 has solid white gold applied numerals whereas the mark 2 are applied? Are there movement differences? Also is it likely Rolex will release a 39mm or the new ref this released in 36mm?

Finally what do people reckon on price? Seems to be in the 7.5 to 9k range

cheers,

mick

Thanks Unkel... ive seen where if you buy the mark 1, rolex will change the hands/dial at service if you ask/pay for it? i dont know maybe i should just forget about it or try to..

After taking a trip out to Poolbeg Lighthouse yesterday, I made my way back into town to visit Timepiece Antique Clocks on Patrick Street [Link]

Got talking with Kevin Chellar who was busy working away on the bench

I had actually met Kevin back in March last year at the watch talk at Engineers Ireland by Damian Duggan. I was telling him my interest in learning Watchmaking , looking at the best ways to start.

He mentioned several colleges in the UK one of which Is the British Horological Institute [Link] that offer day courses that I had been thinking about going to along with getting some junk watches and basic tools to practice with.

There was also mention of starting up a new watchmaking college in Waterford given enough funding/ support can be found which I really hope will go ahead and I would definitely be interested in attending as I'm sure others on here would to.

One of the things he showed me was a homemade staking press he made as part of a filing exercise years ago

Very cool and reminded me of a similar exercise I did in engineering in secondary school.

Huge thanks to Kevin for taking the time to talk and share his workspace

Currently, I'd hazard a guess at NI.

UK still are quite lax on their inbound checks AFAIK and little things like missing TARIC won't send the watch back to sender.

Punative? A professional outfit in the UK trying to ship an item to me for the second time is calling the Irish customs office by its true name: anal. Even the lads in the Irish post office were embarrassed by what customs are doing. We all know there is plenty of anti-British sentiment throughout Irish society. Maybe a lot of that is concentrated in customs.

yes seems things have gone mental... seller market at the moment

had an interesting 'falling out' on adverts yesterday... lad selling a flightmaster for 350 euro... creation selling them for about 210... i posted the link and mentioned how i picked one up last week for 220 delivered from NI.. which i did... he blocked me and reported me for false advertising :)

TBH, I booked our 2022 holiday on Saturday and Irish prices were crazy! Booked the same holiday via UK and even accounting for extra flights and 1 night in a hotel... I saved over €2k 😮

If I'd booked from Ireland? I'd also need to sort new ESTAs as the direct option from Dub was replaced with US stopover! Have a notion that £stg is going to drop v € too before full payment is due on the holiday so I'll be doing some FX trading before then.

On top of the saving in UK price v here. I got 0.5% back on tcb, 3% back on my crypto card and had a £150 off voucher too6😁 now just to get Thirdfox to sort my itinerary while I'm there 😂😂

But! Back on topic! Prices are still mental 😮

Not quite 😉 but, I did get 4 of us away to Mexico incl SNN-MAN and a 1 hotel stay for the same price I 3 of us went in 2018 😁

Was at the Bond movie yesterday... the new seammaster looked nice on mesh.. its an incredibly light watch from when i tried on few weeks ago.

i had my datejust on and noticed the lume properly for the first time..

Of course I do 😉 and as I said to you not so long ago. It's not one I plan on selling. Rather it's a yardstick I'm judging the rising tide by.

It's all well and good me selling it? I'd then have a pot of cash and be unable to afford nearly as good a watch 😜 it's one that still brings me joy every time I wear it.

If someone wants to swap me a dualtime for it tho?😂😂

I don’t want it back! But I hope you do well of it! Nice to see the Rolex tide rising all boats. But that is part of the problem. You can sell yours for more but have to pay more for the next one so it’s a zero sum game in the end.

I think c24 is becoming more and more out of touch. It has to be. I am basing that off my own watches on that. The average on my aqua has rising 15k in 6 months. Yet I got an offer from WF for around 20k less than the current average a month ago or so.

But better to see the graph slopping upwards than downwards.

ill probably test the market with my VC Gen 2 on C24 in the next few weeks so lets see.

Ok bit of a quandary here. I have a brother in law who was born in '74.

He was over for coffee with his Mrs and somehow the conversation moved to watchs and I brought down the box. I have 69,73, 71, And 74 watches to show him. He liked the 74 and 69 accutrons because of the tuning fork and smooth sweep.

At that point, it occurred to me the decent thing to do was get a new Hirsch strap for the n74 accutron, and well, just give it to him.

He's a card carrying NCAD industrial designer, for some reason apple products feature in his life, he does UX for living. Do I give him a serviced sweet looking accutron to see if I can spark an interest? And yes he currently wears an apple watch, can such folks be turned. He was born in 74, so the accutron would be birth year watch.

I'll get a strap for it and make the offer that he can have it if he wears it every now and then.

Which? Their asking prices are always strong 😂

They do seem strong but real dealer prices (ie one that pays tax and has overheads) vs Instagram dealers vs private market are all different ball games.

as the prices are in euros is there any chance they have included VAT?

I think they are prepping for the Christmas busy time and getting the prices up for then, prices are flagged to increase Nov, Dec and Jan and then settle again. Its what TPG and Roman Sharf are doing, and seeing as P&P take their lead from them that probably the cause.

Did Nico not get the memo that Rolex prices are falling? 😅

That has been the same story for several years in a row now. Many of the regulars in here say Rolex sports are a bubble that's about to burst, but we have seen no signs of that at all. And what Fitz says the confidence in upping the prices significantly for the holiday season points to the opposite.

Not as daft as I would be feeling if I claimed prices were dropping last week 😅.

Personally I don’t like Rolex styling. Buried deep in German stuff in my head. I was on the verge of committing to the kinda watch what that would leave a big depreciation hole in my pocket before Fitz said something to make me see sense. The depreciation not being the issue by the way. Rather the risk of buying a watch blindly having never handled it.

What goes up must come down. But the down ain’t started yet.

I did say above it was likely the VAT element for euro sales.