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Thread: Buying watches

  1. #1
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    Buying watches

    I am looking for a new watch as my current watch one is falling appart. I am looking to get my first 'non-sport' watch, something I've considered doing in the past few years but never pulled the trigger.

    In the spur of the moment (the shop was closing, and it was it was the last chance to get a bargain), I made an impulse purchase today, a Seiko Chronograph watch. For what I've paid, I certainly can't complain. And out of the watches on display, it was my favorite. I kinda wanted a Kinetic, but the ones on display were not of my taste.

    Having looked a little online now, I've found a range I very much like: the Seiko Premier SNP00#P1. But as you can see, they doesn't come cheap.

    Some online retailers offer very attractive deals however, and there is also Ebay (30-40% retail pricing). But I wonder if it is safe to shop in those stores. Could I end up with counterfeit items?

    http://www.rkwatchhouse.co.uk/ can match some of the deals from EBay auctions, but I wonder if they are reliable to buy from.

    What do you all think?

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    radix lecti dave87's Avatar
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    Very nice - I've personally got a Seiko Titanium Sports Chronograph. Its a conservative style, but made from Titanium and has a Chronograph funnily enough Retail on it when I bought it was £250, I bought it for 180 in a sale in a jewelers (forgotten the name of the place now )

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    It should be safe to shop on ebay, subject to the usual provisos.

    But warrenty/service if there are problems may be difficult.

    Factor in potential repair costs. Eg get 50% price compared to retail on ebay. Allow 10% for problems, and it's still a good deal.


    I've got an Oris Titanium divers watch. Looks good and should last a long while. I went retail, so if any problems appeared in the first 2 years, they would get fixed easily.
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    I'd always buy retail. I recently purchased a Breitling Chrono Cockpit and like you I did a search on the internet and found some for between 40-60% of the retail price. Then I went on the Breitling site and it says never buy of a website as they only supply to official retail outlets.

    So my advice is pay a bit more for the peace of mind!

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    I definitely wouldn't buy one from anywhere without a physical shop - no PO Boxes or ebay sellers - go for actual stores with an online presence.

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    I personally wouldn't buy a watch from ebay - even if the item itself was genuine I don't have peace of mind about where it came from.

    One option people might not have considered is going to places like Costco or other wholesale retailers. Costco quite often have special imports and you can get watches about 40% cheaper if they happen to have your one in. They don't have a huge range at any one time though.

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    Senior Member JPreston's Avatar
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    I bought a nice chunky diver's watch from this place:

    http://apple.clickandbuild.com/cnb/s...dCategoryID=13

    It weighs a ton They sell mainly military style and collector's watches, but it's worth a browse because a few of them are very nice for everyday use.

    Fact fans: I once had a watch importer as a client and they explained to me the economics of the watch industry. Basically (obviously excluding any gold cases and bracelets) it costs about £2 - £3 to manufacture a Rolex or similar compared to £1 - £2 for a bog standard Elizabeth Duke watch , the premium is purely to establish exclusivity. The mechanism is no more accurate in a rolex than a watch bought at the market, it will not last longer, you don't really need to get them serviced and if they did not cost £k's to buy noone would. I like those titanium seiko kinetics and similar, watches that justify the additional expense on technical or functional grounds (or at least pretend to) but once you spend more than ~£200 on a watch you are actually paying for a piece of jewellery, which may or may not be what you think you are paying for

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    To be honest I've never seen a fake Seiko. Rolexs/omegas/brentlingetc etc fakes all over the place but not Seiko. Although Seikos are very nice they're not a luxury brand so fakers don't usually do them - not enough profit

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    I'd disagree with the comment by JPreston about the cost of a Rolex to that of an Elizabeth Duke watch. It's like saying that the cost of constructing an Aston Martin is similar to that of a Fiat however the material used and the quality of finish will be far superior.

    Seiko tend to have a good balance of style, build quality and of course price!

    You can also get a good discount in store if you take a print out from a reputable on-line store with you. I managed to get £200 knocked off which is about 7%.

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    JPreston I totally disagree with you. I recommend that you post the same comments on these forums to people who live and breathe watches like we live and breathe computers:

    http://www.tz-uk.com/forum/index.php
    http://www.timezone.com/
    http://www.watchuseek.com/

    the quality of a watch is not judged on it's weight (it could have lead in it!) it's subjective some people like a slim watch so that they can wear it under a shire sleeve. Others prefer a particular make for the prestige value. etc etc.

    IF you want a seiko http://www.chronograph.com/store/index.asp would be a nice place to start - very reputable

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    Senior Member JPreston's Avatar
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    Hey disagree all you want, I'm not knocking anyone who collects watches . Just that I was about to buy a Rolex Submariner once, and my client said "No, buy one of these instead" - it was some brand I'd never heard of and cannot remember at all now, probably you could think of it, a real watch-enthusiasts brand no doubt (costs about £10 to make one of those ). Then we had a interesting conversation about how the business works, by the end of which I decided I would never get my pants get pulled down by buying an exclusive watch and conversely my more knowledgeable client still happily drops £5k at a time. Horses for courses, he knows what he is (and is not) paying for.

    The watch industry is nothing at all like the automotive or graphics card industries - if it was, for the price of one Aston Martin (which would cost about £70 for materials and manufacture) you could buy 100 Fiat Puntos that each still do 0 - 60 in 4 seconds and top out at 170mph . An Aston Martin probably costs (only) 10 times what a Punto does but to many people is 10 times the car, and certainly 10 times the engineering and R&D has gone into it when you consider the relative volumes sold. But the margin on an Aston Martin is still nowhere near 99.9%...I can think of nothing else that sells for such a mark-up, even hand-made jewellery or the one-off designer dresses stars wear to the oscars aren't as marked up

    The materials used in expensive watches are just pennies more expensive than those used in cheap watches, a few grams of a higher grader steel or superior mineral glass. The manufacturing processes and finish are effectively identical - they don't have hunched-up artisans squinting over hand-cut mechanisms in the Rolex factory. I only find it interesting because it's a ploy I used to buy into myself and guess a lot of other people do without considering themselves collectors, whereas although one can spend £10k on a fountain pen or £20k on a postage stamp this wouldn't appeal to nearly so many people and not even their respective collectors would argue that the prices were in any way derived from or justified by the materials, design or manufacture. If you think a particular watch (or fountain pen etc) is worth thousands essentially because of it's brand, then it genuinely is worth that much to you. But that value doesn't necessarily communicate to everyone else.

    I think we can all agree that Seikos are quite nice anyway, and not exhorbitantly over priced

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    I looked at Seiko Kinetic because I used to have a Seiko automatic a long time ago (before I lost it on my 21st birthday). I like the idea of never having to replace the batteries in a watch as in my experience this is when they are most likely to get damaged. In the end I went for this Citizen Titanium Eco-Drive because I'd heard the Kinetic mechanism can get worn out. Since the rechage mechanism for the Eco-Drive is solar powered, there are no moving parts to wear.

    EDIT:

    Went for titanium after my last watch smashed into a million pieces when I fell out of my back door.
    Last edited by Free Thinker; 11-12-2006 at 04:33 PM.

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    Senior Member JPreston's Avatar
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    I'll see your eco-drive titanium and you raise my solar-powered G-shock that sets itself according to the atomic clock

    I figured a shockproof waterproof solar-powered digital watch has zero moving parts and will never need opening, so in theory will last forever. But after a couple of years the EL button broke, and no longer returns out . In fact now I think about I would have been better off buying a cheap timex ironman and replacing it everytime it broke (or needed setting ). Still a nice watch for sports though, especially cycling because the vibrations can't harm it.

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    I have to say, when I was in the jewellers I was very tempted by the sub £10 watches with a guranteed 10 year battery life. Then I saw an old lady buying one and they didn't seem quite so appealing.
    Last edited by Free Thinker; 11-12-2006 at 04:58 PM. Reason: Typo.

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