Yesterday evening, another French eBay seller
pierrotlunaire54 listed another NOS Yema Spationaute III Aragatz, also coincidentally with the yellowed lume, as a 7-day auction with a highly over-optimistic opening bid price of 750 Euros. Whilst not as outrageously expensive as the example I started this thread with, this seller, who's evidently a collector of space memorabilia, is also clearly attempting to cash in on his earlier investment.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/montre-YEMA- ... 4472099224
- Yema-SpationauteIII-eBay-Oct2021-Listing.png (191.88 KiB) Viewed 13076 times
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- rsz_yema-spationauteiii-ebay-oct2021-11.jpg (242.29 KiB) Viewed 13076 times
I won't bother posting a screen print of the lengthy detailed description, just quote this pertinent sentence from it:
J’ai acheté cette montre il y a une douzaine d’années dans une boutique aux USA. N° étiquette vendeur : YN80P76AQ. Pas de boite.
Translates as: I bought this watch a dozen years ago from a store in the USA. Vendor label number: YN80P76AQ. No box.
The clue to how much he originally paid for it is the Yema card hang tag, of which he's amusingly obliterated the retail price. It did read $475, but that's academic, because he probably paid considerably less. Going back to August 2012, US eBay seller
izeldor (who it transpired was once the US importer / distributor for Yema) started listing NOS Spationaute III's. Initially they offered them with opening bid prices of $250, but later reduced that to $225 - and a good many sold for that price, for example, this one from
page 2 of the old forum's Yema N7s and N8s spotted on eBay .... thread:
- Yema-SpationauteIII-eBay-Oct2012-izeldor-OldForum-Post.png (125.74 KiB) Viewed 13073 times
I can't be certain which of their auctions he won, because US eBay seller
izeldor re-used the same set of small-ish photos for subsequent listings, without including individual shots of the case-backs showing serial numbers.
- YemaSpationauteIII-eBay-August2012-1.jpg (35.88 KiB) Viewed 13071 times
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They did however come supplied with a lacquered wooden Yema presentation box:
- YemaSpationauteIII-eBay-August2012-Box.jpg (16.03 KiB) Viewed 13032 times
All 4 that I purchased from
izeldor came with the same Yema card barcoded hang tags. Here's a couple of mine:
- YemaSpationauteIII-USA_barcode-Tag-Invertedx200%.jpg (114.76 KiB) Viewed 13071 times
- YemaSpationauteIII-USA_barcode-Tag-Otherx200%.jpg (218.05 KiB) Viewed 13071 times
(There is also the option to make a much lower sensible offer). Obviously, his canny inclusion of 'Mouvement Seiko 7A38' as a sub-title is attracting a fair bit of interest.
I usually ignore most of them. Yesterday I received one from the would-be profiteering French eBay re-seller of that Yema Spationaute III - for 'only' 870 Euros. 
Indeed, the French seller 
