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I guarantee your carboots are better than ours. Carboots aren't a thing here at all. Closest analogy from what I can tell  after some googling would be a garage sale, or maybe a flea market. Craigslist killed most of the garage sales.

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37 minutes ago, spectre6000 said:

I guarantee your carboots are better than ours. Carboots aren't a thing here at all. Closest analogy from what I can tell  after some googling would be a garage sale, or maybe a flea market. Craigslist killed most of the garage sales.

Start a trend Spectre. Grap a piece of spare land cheap, preferably a field. The field owners charge around £10 here per seller's  car, more for a van and buyers pay around a quid each. Yard sales are just one person's gear. Carboots can have hundreds of sellers all wanting to have a clear out at home.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Another flea market find. Caught my eye.  Only $1 US, and the band was an additional $1.  It's a 1960s Elgin with an automatic 17 jewel 859 movement.  Not very rare or valuable as I understand, but it was the only thing at that booth which I was interested in.  All others were the kind of cheap quartz watches you could get in a crane game.

It runs!  Very well!  And keeps time!  I am growing attached to it.

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10 minutes ago, KarlvonKoln said:

Another flea market find. Caug as I understand, but it was the only thing at that booth which I was interested in.  All others were the kind of cheap quartz watches you could get in a crane game.

It runs!  Very well!  And keeps time!  I am growing attached to it.

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I think its pretty good Karl regardless of what you paid . But for 2 bucks can you even buy a coffee for that ? Here in the Uk we can't. So a great coffee price watch matey, we would only get the head or the bracelet 😀 

Just now, Neverenoughwatches said:

I think its pretty good Karl regardless of what you paid . But for 2 bucks can you even buy a coffee for that ? Here in the Uk we can't. So a great coffee price watch matey, we would only get the head or the bracelet 😀 

Heres mine today. 50 pence. Or half a quid. A 1980's  Swatch Pop watch with a jellyfish back.  These things are becoming very popular with collectors,  the watch is sealed apart from a battery compartment. The head fits into a surround ( hence the name) which has the strap attached. I think i prefer yours lol

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3 hours ago, KarlvonKoln said:

Another flea market find. Caught my eye.  Only $1 US, and the band was an additional $1.  It's a 1960s Elgin with an automatic 17 jewel 859 movement.  Not very rare or valuable as I understand, but it was the only thing at that booth which I was interested in.  All others were the kind of cheap quartz watches you could get in a crane game.

It runs!  Very well!  And keeps time!  I am growing attached to it.

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Love that watch, and I'm a big fan of that style of numerals which I have a couple of my watches. Pretty good for $1!

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Thought I'd share a couple of my 404 club successes, as I'm finding these harder to find. Both of these came in a job lot from the Channel Islands. The Junghans was in the worst shape, missing it's stem and a previous owner had tinkered with it as a number of parts were loose. Luckily nothing was broken, and it was my first go at fitting a stem and crown which I'm quite pleased about.

The Systema keeps great time, I like the little space rocket motif. Again someone had been tinkering inside. 

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21 minutes ago, Bearman said:

Thought I'd share a couple of my 404 club successes, as I'm finding these harder to find. Both of these came in a job lot from the Channel Islands. The Junghans was in the worst shape, missing it's stem and a previous owner had tinkered with it as a number of parts were loose. Luckily nothing was broken, and it was my first go at fitting a stem and crown which I'm quite pleased about.

The Systema keeps great time, I like the little space rocket motif. Again someone had been tinkering inside. 

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Like both of those. Especially the Systema, bid for those in the past, like you i love the little spaceship.

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Another watch pulled from my "Dresser Drawer Auction" pile. This one is a "Black Shield", what a killer name! It's a new brand to me, anyone heard of this one? It was already a runner, and a good one at that on the timegrapher, but I was able to get it down to +5 seconds/day and 0.1 ms beat error, so I'll call that a win.

It was my first time working on a UTC 29 / Seiko 66 and the Diafix springs on the escape wheel gave me fits. I may have said a bad word or two. Or three. After sending the dial side spring into the ether I learned that you don't need to remove the spring and should leave it in before replacing the capstone, and my dresser drawer coughed up a donor spring and 2nd time went much easier. I'm sure it's not a valuable watch at all but the lessons learned were, so again that's a win. And it has a SS case as well, so all that swearing was worth it 🙂

 

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I had accumulated a few pocket watch movements for pocket money prices recently, so over the last couple of evenings I've been sorting out the good from the bad and the ugly.

Four runners, plus one in need of a mainspring, and one with a broken balance, which donated its spring to the needy one.

There are a couple more that I'll perhaps look at later in the week.

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Edited by AndyHull
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1 hour ago, gbyleveldt said:

That should be sat on your bar table. When guests get unruly you just wield it to make your point 😉

Haha. Funny. What and make my baseball bat redundant?  I  dont think the warning " oh shit Rich is getting his antique watchmaker's tool out " has the same effect as "Oh shit Rich is getting his baseball bat out " 🤣

Edited by Neverenoughwatches
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2 hours ago, spectre6000 said:

I thought you guys played cricket or somesuch... Don't you have your own flavor of stick you should be wielding?

Lol. I'm not particularly a cricket fan myself more rugby league.  When i was younger i found i was much more adept with a baseball bat than a cricket bat. Now I'm older and a lot more tame thats now in the loft, and I've grown fond of the tennis racket. Here there are two points of contact, the softer netted side is the warning side the hard edge side is the you're starting to pee me off side 🤣

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8 hours ago, Neverenoughwatches said:

Eyup muckers. How about this for a 404. It was a quid. Quite unusable but it makes a nice paperweight.

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I'm very curious to see how accurate this paperweight is if i can get the piece out of the center. Not sure what that is yet as i have very little experience with staking tools. I just seem to be collecting tools ( staking and jewelling tools and a lathe ) and not playing with them yet. Semi retirement put on hold while i finish two big jobs refurb jobs, nealy there one week to go yey. 🙆‍♂️

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I snuck another nice one out of the $1 watch bins at the local flea market.  A Glycine Compressor Automatic.  It needed full cleaning and service.  And a new crystal.  Just opening the case was daunting and memorable.  Getting the old crystal out was (not) fun.  Getting the new one in had me swearing in German (due to the tension ring having its own ideas).  I ensured it was well regulated before sealing it all back in tight.  Man, they don't call it a "Compressor" for nothing;  I'm glad it'll be five years before I have to open it again.  The bracelet with which I bought it was clearly taken off a cheap old LCD quartz watch.  The style of it was ever so wrong for this.  But I had a nice comfy leather strap, so I put that one on it.  I did not do more than a light cleaning on the dial, for fear of ruining it.  But I think it turned out well. 

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