Reply To: The Right Pitch

[chris mabbott]

I’ve noticed the increased use of the word RARE Bernie. We used to encounter it a lot in the medal collecting zone, until the forums made it into a dirty word LOL
which just goes to prove that sellers or anyone, cruise the forums and use the info posted therein as a base for their pricing/collecting. With watches they can even raise the prices of parts as a simple google search for Waltham balance staff will bring up your request Bernie. So if I was a savvy eBay seller and I had a few staffs, I could double the price. Just a small example.

If you look at some of the info, photos etc on this site for example, some of the photos have well over a 100+ views. Is that all members of this site?

This was one of the reasons that the military forums went dark and required users to register so only they can view photos.
Sounds crazy but the prices of German medals, specifically those special ones known only to collectors, would zoom up in price after a thread was posted about them.

Combine this with cheesy marketing write ups, buyer gullibility, other dealers looking to make a buck, bidding frenzy/testosterone and a thriving parts business, and you have what we are seeing now!

An interesting observation I made a while ago… I bid on a bulk lot of crystals, one of the crystals had a hand written number and comment on it, I remembered the neat handwriting… Anyway the lot sold eventually for $200. About a month later I saw the very same crystal being sold individually for $25 LOL

So this guy was trying to sell 8 of his 150 glasses to make his money back, fine, that’s business, but what these guys don’t realize is that these practices are simply going to make the hobby grind to a halt!

As you say Bernie, a super RARE 7 jewel movement is not as rare as those with 3 jewels, solid TITANIUM oil sinks, solid GOLD balance screws. And my personal favorite of all time is the capitalized use of RUBY JEWELS haha.
Even though they are, wear wise, inferior to the man made garnet stones that are much tougher, No, ruby is ruby like krieg ist krieg und schnapps ist schnapps.

Daily breakfast rant is now officially over LOL