Jeff

I love the concept that you are buying a seller as much as a watch. However, I think what you point out here is that buyers/owners of vintage watches ultimately have the responsibility for making good choices. Let the buyer beware is only half of the equation. The buyer must also develop the tools to evaluate and make good decisions after his/her wariness is activated in any buying situation. Your questions are a good start but they can't really get you into the watch. Watches tell the story not dealers in the end.

I guess I can’t blame a celebrity with enough money to be buying millions of dollars worth of watches for suing someone who he feels has put the screws to him. What I can’t understand is the amount of trust John Mayer placed in this dealer…or might place in any dealer for that matter. After almost 40 years in the watch business I know that 95% plus of watches that are 20 year or more old have been serviced and messed with. Even or maybe especially when watches go to the factory for service they get changed and messed with.

If I were going to buy a vintage watch for several hundred thousand dollars, especially if this price was top retail, I would take the watch to an expert other than the dealer who was selling it for an opinion If the selling dealer and I could not come to some kind of arrangement to let me do it, maybe involving me putting the money on the table first, I would tell the dealer to sell his watch to someone else…no matter how much trust we had built up.

JohnCote