Wanna Buy A Watch

I brought in a Vacheron & Constantin Swiss 18K vintage wrist watch to have it tuned a bit - it was a touch slow. Simple job in ordinary hands. "Wanna buy a watch" held onto my watch for three weeks (!!!). I kept calling & asking politely when I could pick it up & if they ran into any problems. Every time, they said "no - it's fine, we just sent it out to a specialist instead of doing it in-house & it takes him a bit longer. We'll call you tomorrow" Didn't ever get the call back the next day...so each time I waited 3 days & then called myself. Same response each time. This went on for 3 weeks! Finally, I called & they said,"we have it in, come pick it up". The first thing I noticed was the odd smell. It smelled like dog doo! Yes! Excrement! Then upon closer inspection, I noticed that the metal band had all of its gaps filled in with a brownish/dark substance! Definitely not there when I left the watch with them & the watch definitely didn't smell like dogcrap when I left it with them. Un-be-lieveable...! Best I can figure is that whoever they sent to the watch to somehow allowed his dog to swallow it & then had to wait for it to show up at the "other end". The whole episode speaks for itself... more

I went into "Wanna buy a watch" to have a simple tune up on a very expensive vintage watch I had, and two weeks later I got the watch back, but it was not in the same condition I had brought it in on. The sweep and hands were ALL repainted,and horrifically executed at that.Let me remind you, this is a vintage watch with a nice warm patina(numerals etc...) and now the watch has these badly painted BRIGHT WHITE hands shooting out from a warm black dial. This was all done without my knowledge or consent, and to add INSULT to injury, the tip on the hour hand was broken off, in the end, the store apologized without explanation on WHY their watchmaker took it upon himself to redesign my watch, and tried to unsuccessfully rectify the situation by repainting the hands AGAIN, each time it came out even worse than before, it looked like a 5 year old did it, ultimately I had to take it to someone else to do the repair job on the hands more

Quite a silly name, yet this place takes their craft and service very seriously. The owner of the shop was present when I as there, and he was re-decorating the place to liven up the look of it. It’s a great place if you’re looking for classic or vintage watches, but I’m not sure you’ll find a more modern, Fossil-type here. more

I've been collecting vintage American wristwatches from the 1920's and 1930's for about four years, and one of the places I found early on to gaze at beautifully restored watches is this store on trendy Melrose Ave. They have an extensive collection of vintage American watches (Hamilton, Bulova, Illinois, Elgin, Waltham), and perhaps an even more extensive collection of vintage European (mostly Swiss) watches (Rolex, LeCoultre, Longines, Cartier, etc.). Their timepieces are top notch, restored and in full working condition. My assessment is, if you want a vintage watch for yourself or to buy as a gift, you have two choices. You can buy from this nice store and have the piece of mind that the watch is original and will work. Or you can educate yourself on vintage watches (brands, models and prices), and buy the same watch for 1/3 to 1/2 the price on eBay. Yes, they are that much less expensive on eBay. But there are aspects of eBay that make some people uncomfortable, especially when spending a few hundred dollars. I bought a dozen watches on eBay and never had a problem. So this is my recommended path. However if you are more comfortable buying in a brick and morter store from a knowledgeable salesperson, and you are okay with paying at least twice what you'd pay at auction, then this is definitely the place to go. www.wannabuyawatch.com more