Hi to all forum members,

Just thought it would be helpful to share some information to prevent anyone from falling prey to a scam that I recently experienced (along with some other members of this forum) on eBay ( hey,what's new!).

You may have noticed recently that some of us were bidding on the 1969 Carrera silver dial with black sub-registers, the auction for which ended on 23 Sept 2004. Ralph was the seller, from whom many here I am sure have bought various fantastic Heuer pieces from him in the past (I have).

I, along with some other forum members (Hi Chuck), placed bids on this watch and although we did not win, I received a number of emails shortly after the auction ended offering me a second chance to buy this item claiming that the original winner had failed to pay and that the watch was now available at my original highest bid price. The point is this, the emails seemed very legit with eBay formatting and hyperlinks to an explanation on the "second chance" option on eBay and the sender being "aw-confirm@ebay.com".

What didn't look right was that each mail reply that I eventually received came from different email addresses. I finally got to the bottom of this by asking the other bidders and, most importantly, Ralf, the seller himself and confirmed that this was all a scam.

Many of you may have experienced this before but this was the first time for me and I just wanted to give everyone a "heads-up". Someone out there is targeting vintage Heuer collectors (or vintage watch collectors for that matter) so beware!

Thanks to all those bidders and Ralf for responding to my enquiries so promptly - you saved me from departing with my hard earned cash.

Max