A real fantastic like-new condition part Gold Patek Philippe Nautilus watch with a "paper…read morecertificate of authenticity" is now mine! YEA!!!! Happy Early Birthday present to me!!!
This amazing feat is mostly due in part to the fine honest customer service at this German Jewelry shop that also deals with high end Vintage Watches.
I had found them on Chrono24, which is like Audiogon for high-end Audiophiles (forget Ebay for this). You can find some fantastic deals on amazing watches if you want to do all of the following & much more:
1) Take a chance on the honestly & reputation of the Seller in a far off country.
2) Deal with the significant language & cultural barriers that it does involve.
3) Deal with the complexity of wiring money from an American Bank account to a German one, which uses a totally different system.
4) Deal with the hassles of trying to calculate a value for something that is almost "priceless".
As well as doing tons of Goggling on something that is ultra-rare & hard to find.
5) Dealing with the weird system of calculation of Tariffs as an "importer" while you deal with the brain dead at Fed-Ex.
6) Dealing with endless weeks of hassle while you deal with multiple time zones between NY Fed-Ex, Germany, & California.
7) Finally getting your treasured watch and hoping that it is not too good to be true! Especially since it still costs as much as a decent used car, but a new one can easily cost you as much as a Lexus to a Tesla.
8) Getting Fed-Ex's inflated Tariff bill, where they also slap-on various processing fees for themselves.
9) Negotiating with some kinder person for a discount on the fees at Fed-Ex, and thankfully getting them.
10) Deciding whether it belongs in your safety deposit box or sometimes on your wrist.
11) Dealing with the questionable value of a vintage quartz vs. a mechanical watch among collectors.
....but since Warren Buffet has a similar Patek quartz watch for years,
how could I go wrong? Well, lots of ways, as you can see the above steps.
Well fortunately it was both genuine & a super-bargain, despite all the hassles. It also happened to be in mint condition and fit my wrist perfectly. It is in a very handsome two tone Gold/ Steel band & a solid gold case. The mechanism is the original vintage Quartz from a decade or two ago, but it is one of the best, and should last for more decades. It uses an ordinary watch battery, and is the only Sports version that Patek made as far as I know. I also know at least one or two watch shops who can service this unusual watch. One of the main problems with the Quartz versions, is that if it does die, the Patek Co. in Switzerland will charge you a king's ransom to either service or repair it....
but with mechanical high end watch that range from Rolex to the most collectable Patek, it is recommend to have them service every few years, which becomes extremely costly over time.
Even though I think my mechanical Rolex is cool, I surely hate to wind it (I also hate to endlessly spin my far cheaper "Kinetic" watch, & had to get a rare dealer-only special induction charger all the way from the Phillipines so I do not have to spin it many thousands of times), so I favor either Quartz or Solar Quartz with Radio-controlled time correction.
It is fun to have a brand that is the most collectable watch in the entire world.
Thanks to the great service & help from Ruben Hettinger, Salomo Hettinger, and Julia Jendrowski at this great jewelry shop in Germany.
BTW- Mr. Ruben Hettinger was great about talking to me in English to ease my concerns and answer many of my questions all the way from Germany to California. Julia, his assistant, was super about answering my emails, and helping me through the complexities of this, but even they were throw by the hassles that Fed-Ex presented. Anyway, all of us persisted, and eventually, my wish came true!
Thanks again! :)
