Lee's Watch Thread for MM'ers of Impeccable Taste

[WRXtranceformed]

Phew what a day.  I have never waited so hard.  Shipping was crazy fast overnight from CA but the FedEx guy was an hour late on his window.  If he delivered during a client executive call I had to lead, I would have raged on the world.

Background story:  You all know I had been slush-funding for a while but I found out last week that my team was going to hit our yearly revenue goal a month ahead of schedule.  It's been a long, tough grind of a year and a half building a neglected business unit into a viable, thriving and respected business.  I decided it was time to go after my grail!

The experience unfortunately was not as pleasant as I was hoping.  Buying from trusted preowned luxury watch dealers was more used-car salesy than boutique experience.  I think I was expecting more considering there is a really great, well established community of dealers in the watch enthusiast world but my bad experiences were actually with some of the most well-known ones.  Many dealers were posting "inventory" on their pages that was either quickly sold or never existed in the first place, so that they could keep you on a list indefinitely.  

Aside from that, I learned that this time of the year is one of the worst to go luxury watch shopping.  Apparently it's a thing that people go and buy 5-6 Rolexes at a time before the holidays, as gifts or whatever, making it difficult to find good examples.  I have never heard of this happening so clearly I am not hanging in certain circles

I narrowed it down to three dealers who were all good and not stringing me along and settled on a mint G serial GMT Master II from Patrick at OC Watch Guy!!  The G serial dates the watch to about 2010, this one was originally sold in March of 2011 by an AD down in Mexico (that Joey discovered after some Googling!).  This is also the last year before Rolex went to a "random" serial system.  I think the thought is that Rolex went to randomized serials because some models were sitting on the shelves at ADs for years and people didn't want to buy a new Rolex that was actually a few years old.  So this method ensures for the most part that since 2011 you can't tell when each specific watch was made.  In the next 20-30 years when this becomes vintage status, I am really glad I will be able to know exactly when this watch was made! 

Shipped overnight and showed up today.  I am smitten, it gives me absolutely the same feeling as the first time I tried one on.  Unboxing:



Didn't know what this was until I opened it:



A very cool touch from the seller!









Not sized yet but test fitting



I made an attempt to size it like I do with most of my watches but the screws were in tight and I really didn't feel like shredding the bracelet.  Heading to the jeweler tomorrow for a sizing and appraisal for the insurance company!