E-mail from Reader : Buy New or Pre-Owned?

I have a few blog entries that I intended to write upon, pursuant to the Chinese New Year celebrations. However, I received the attached e-mail from a reader, which requested for some advice on whether to get a piece of pre-owned watch. I thought that I could answer him in a few days' time but he had followed up with another 2 e-mails in a span of a couple of hours, so I thought that I would take a bit of time and have this entry for him up.

Attached was the e-mail as received from Michael :

Well, Michael, I generally loved a good bargain and from my purchases, you could gauged that I was not a snob for pre-owned pieces too. I flipped watches pretty regularly too. Generally, you tend to get a good bargain with pre-owned watches.

In reference to the Armand Nicolet MO2 watch that you forwarded to me, I must add that I have had no prior liaison with the seller; so whatever I posted henceforth was my personal thoughts and not skewed towards any parties. In this regard, I generally thought, "Hmmm, would I buy this watch with my own monies at the proposed RM12.5k?"

Pro :
1) Watch was fairly new and still under lots of warranty.
2) Full calendar with moonphase, was an attractive complication.

Con :
1) Price maybe.

Why the price, you may ask. After all, it was already severely discounted from RM23k to RM12.5k, for an almost new watch.

Well, that's the power of the Net. A simple keying in the model no. and many options came about. Generally, the prices would not differ too significantly for BNIB pieces; although the online pricing may be cheaper overseas as the 6% GST was not factored in as yet. However, I found that both the local and overseas pricing were generally cheaper (for new pieces) compared to the seller's asking price (pre-owned); which had me wondering if the seller did actually purchased at the RRP (in which case, he had not done his homework), or did he get a good discount but was not passing it on. I clicked on a few links and generally, none of the sellers were selling at the RRP prices. A very healthy discount was adhered upon.

I would opine that Armand Nicolet was an under-rated old brand with lots of history and given its design and workmanship, it would seemed to be a good buy at around RM12k. However, if the price of pre-owned was higher than that of the new piece, I would generally prefer to buy a new piece. Unless the pre-owned piece was of historical importance or owned by someone of importance by my reckoning.

So Michael, it's your own choice to make. Perhaps the seller factored in the "rare" rotor in the pricing or otherwise. If you were really interested, Michael, I would suggest that you get in touch with the seller and checked if you could get a better pricing from him.