Adventures on Goodwill's online auctions
Posted: Tue Mar 01, 2022 4:53 pm
Lately I've been hooked on perusing Goodwill's online auction site, shopgoodwill.com. I thought I'd start a thread on it to share experiences. If you are interested in repairing vintage watches, low risk fliers on unique watches/clocks, or flipping I'd suggest giving it a look. The key to keep in mind, though, is most of the time you have NO IDEA whether what you're bidding on works or not.
I've made two purchases in the last ~45 days: A little Seiko quartz world time desk clock and a Schatz 1000 day mantle clock. Both actually work! I paid about $55 shipped for the Seiko, which was probably a tad too much.
I paid $60 shipped for the Schatz, is at least $30 below what a working one costs on ebay before shipping and tax. I just got it yesterday and before regulation it's running about 2 minutes slow per day.
While actually buying stuff is fun, the real entertainment value comes from looking at interesting stuff. One auction I watched with interest was the "vomit clock"
https://shopgoodwill.com/item/139283017
Also interesting is that in the ~45 days I have been regularly looking, no fewer than 7 LeCoultre Atmos clocks have been posted. They mostly sell for $450 to $700, which is a great price if they work. If not... who knows.
One thing I have noticed are consistently not deals are Seiko watches. Recently a current version Samurai and women's Seiko 5 sold for $450, which is steep. There are also lots of older Seikos, which seem to all go for too much (IMO) given that functionality is unknown. For instance this 6139 Pogue ends tomorrow. It's already at $550. A very good example of this watch in working order might fetch $750. But this one looks rough, and if you have to service it, you'd be better of buying a working one elsewhere.
Here's a gen 1 Monster for nearly $300: https://shopgoodwill.com/item/139519285. That's at least $100 too high.
And here's an original 62MAS 6217-8000. If it works, this might be worth $3k. But the condition does not look good, so I'd bet against it actually ticking. Check these indices:
Anyway, this ended up longer than I wanted. Just thought I'd share this as a resource for those who may find it interesting. Feel free to post up anything cool you find!
I've made two purchases in the last ~45 days: A little Seiko quartz world time desk clock and a Schatz 1000 day mantle clock. Both actually work! I paid about $55 shipped for the Seiko, which was probably a tad too much.
I paid $60 shipped for the Schatz, is at least $30 below what a working one costs on ebay before shipping and tax. I just got it yesterday and before regulation it's running about 2 minutes slow per day.
While actually buying stuff is fun, the real entertainment value comes from looking at interesting stuff. One auction I watched with interest was the "vomit clock"
https://shopgoodwill.com/item/139283017
Also interesting is that in the ~45 days I have been regularly looking, no fewer than 7 LeCoultre Atmos clocks have been posted. They mostly sell for $450 to $700, which is a great price if they work. If not... who knows.
One thing I have noticed are consistently not deals are Seiko watches. Recently a current version Samurai and women's Seiko 5 sold for $450, which is steep. There are also lots of older Seikos, which seem to all go for too much (IMO) given that functionality is unknown. For instance this 6139 Pogue ends tomorrow. It's already at $550. A very good example of this watch in working order might fetch $750. But this one looks rough, and if you have to service it, you'd be better of buying a working one elsewhere.
Here's a gen 1 Monster for nearly $300: https://shopgoodwill.com/item/139519285. That's at least $100 too high.
And here's an original 62MAS 6217-8000. If it works, this might be worth $3k. But the condition does not look good, so I'd bet against it actually ticking. Check these indices:
Anyway, this ended up longer than I wanted. Just thought I'd share this as a resource for those who may find it interesting. Feel free to post up anything cool you find!
