I’m interested in buying a pre-owned Speedmaster of some variety, and Japanese sellers consistently come up as having especially low prices with good photos. They don’t tend to have a service history or any real info about the watches. So what do I need to know before purchasing from these sellers? Anything to look out for or avoid?
Figure in the cost of a full service when you receive it, those Japanese dealers on C24 never service the watches, cosmetic cleanup only.
Not entirely true. Got an SMP 300 titanium in mint condition. Also came with a fresh service card. It wasn’t even mentioned in the presentation. Asked about it, and they said, they serviced it. The timing machine said the same thing.
That’s cool. I do think it’s probably the case that yours was the exception and not the rule though. There was a DeVille Prestige listed from one of the big Japanese dealers recently that literally looked brand new and was priced right, yay! Except if you dig into the Kanji text in their description, they say it was running at -35 spd with no further commentary, yikes! That watch is a chronometer, what kind of shape was it in to be running at -35? A buyer would need to ante up for a $900 Omega service on that watch right away, which suddenly makes it not such a great $$ deal.
Yeah, you are always buying the seller first 😏