Good morning.
A long post is this but I am such a poor poster generally, I felt I should offer up something that might be of interest.
We went to an AD in Northampton yesterday, not exactly local to us, but not too far either. I’ve spent the last few weeks looking to ‘invest’ in a couple of stainless Rolexes as I like the strength of them down the line as well as the pleasure and good fortune to be able to maybe ‘rotate’ a few as part of a little but growing collection. I’ve had a WTB for a Polar Exp II on here and I am still booting myself for chickening out on a great deal from a really sound forum member because I don’t trust the Royal mail. The idiots lost one of our MCFC Seasoncards the other week, a replaceable item at no cost, but how does that happen? It doesn’t, it’s bent. Anyway, I went back and forth on models and settled on the 2 best for value, IMHO...the BLNR and Hulk. And yes, the BLNR is basically not available in the UK, as they would have you believe, not new anyway, with a waiting list longer than the lost mail list for the aforementioned RM. Hulks are sought after and my careful watching of 2nd hand dealers for a few weeks together with tentative enquiries here and there gave me enough knowledge to press on.
So yesterday morning I woke early and composed a brief email about wanting a new BLNR, my preferred choice, with a passing interest in a Hulk if the Brigadoon GMT was unavailable. Then I cut and pasted into emails to about 20 dealers who I found on the Rolex site. Where there is an online form, Google Chrome fills in the bits and again you cut and paste and away you go. In all, I reckon I sent 30 emails in the hour. Then waited. Then they started to call back, which is what should happen. By 10 o’clock, I had been ‘bumped up’ a waiting list for the BLNR if I committed to buying both the GMT and the Hulk, the latter also being in the shop. The first in line was not in a position to buy, I was told. Another dealer miraculously came up with the same deal for the non-existent Brigadoon and the somewhat flexible nature of the ‘list’ was kind of interesting...she said she would call the customer at the top of the list as he was overseas. Uh huh, I thought.
So, I figured that we’d go and bag the pair and off we went. If I get short of dough, they will sell in a day, hold on to them and they are a sound ‘investment’. Money in the bank is an appalling waste of money these days, so why not? Not being ostentatious, it is just crap at less than 1% interest, buy a decent watch and enjoy it. So, some pictures. Plenty of comparison shots and of course the dealer wanted to get his stuff out and we were not at all bothered by the vast array of monstrous high value items he showed us. I thought I’d share:
Started with the biggest watch I have ever seen or indeed tried on...a Breitling Emergency, 53mm I think he said. It is about 1 inch thick, no joke, and a snip at £12,000 something. I cannot believe anyone outside of Special Op’s would find a use for this:
He then brought out the pair we had agreed to buy...full list price, but I didn't expect a discount on these easy sell items:
Better views:
A comparisons against my TT Sub, for no other reason than a bit of watch pornography, which is never wrong:
He then got some dirty stuff out...a £51k Choctona...Platona...whatever. Weighs more than Venus. I thought it was appalling...lol:
Then a RG YM. Really, so far from being my cup of tea, but porn nevertheless, so...another brew please mate:
He was very keen on the new green dial WG DD 40, so got one out. It made the table line up a sweet £100k. Again, purely for porn purposes, dismiss as you will. For what it's worth, I'd take my TT Sub LB, over any of them such is my love for it. The black TT is my daughter's and I cannot see it at all; the blue dial trumps it all day long. But, that's half the fun, swapsies, etc. I'll shut up, here's a few more:
Enjoy the weekend.
Kind regards,
Michael.