Snagged 3 black dialed Racers in 24 hours !

[Seiko7A38]

Profiteering Spanish eBay re-seller scufutzz appears to have taken a vacation. I'd almost given up bothering to search the Spanish classified sites, because he'd been vacuuming up everything in sight recently, particularly off Wallapop. Yesterday, I relented and was rewarded for my searching with 3 Racers.

The first pair, both NOS with tags, were being offered by a B&M outlet store - Fabregó Joiers in Vic (near Barcelona).

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They'd only been listed the day before:

https://es.wallapop.com/item/reloj-race ... -622627351

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https://es.wallapop.com/item/reloj-race ... -622633157

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[Seiko7A38]

Whereas NOS is always nice to have, it was the third Racer I spotted on Wallapop yesterday morning that I craved most. I already have a couple of J39026-70 'Breitbling' clones, with burgundy and white dials. The oldest is undoubtedly by far the worst condition J39 in my collection and the second isn't a lot better. This one is certainly no oil painting, but it appears to be in better condition - and it has a black dial, which I hadn't seen before. So I absolutely had to have it.

https://es.wallapop.com/item/reloj-race ... -619034218

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The Spanish seller had other ideas. She didn't initially want to sell it to me via Wallapop and tried to re-direct me to her parallel listing on Vinted, where she claimed she was able to ship internationally.

https://www.vinted.es/hommes/montres/97 ... eloj-racer

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Unfortunately as I discovered much to my annoyance and frustration, when you're signed into Vinted using a UK account (as I needed to be able to enter my delivery address), there was no option to purchase nor shipping costs shown.

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The photos on Vinted were the same three she'd used in her Wallapop listing, but slightly larger and better resolution:

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After umpteen messages back and forth, late this morning I finally managed to persuade the seller to email me her bank details and I paid her using TransferWise. Sometimes I wonder if it's worth all the effort and hassle.

[Seiko7A38]

On the other hand, if you've chanced across a cooperative and helpful foreign seller, it's often worth making an effort. Even if it means using Google to translate every message back and forth into Spanish: Lo siento, no hablo español. Later I found out that the other Spanish Wallapop seller actually understood English.

After I'd concluded my purchase of the NOS Racer J38907-80 and J39907-50, last Thursday, she sent me a tantalizing message saying that she'd found 3 more NOS Racer J39's in their warehouse. But I'd have to wait till after the long Easter weekend for more details. Yesterday morning, she emailed me the model numbers, followed by half a dozen photos of each and her asking prices. In an amusing coincidence, 2 of the 3 had black dials !

The first was a J39024-50 'Reverse Panda'.

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The second was a J39027-70 'BreitBling clone'.

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The J39024-50 'Reverse Panda' was very much a case of my not needing yet another example, which I'm not ashamed to admit, because it's my favourite variant of this case design. If you followed the Racer J39 'Spanish Inquisition' thread on the old forum, you may remember I started fruitlessly chasing after one of these as far back as November 2014 - the infamous 'Tony from Mostoles' listing on Segundomano.es. I'd since been fortunate enough to acquire two NOS examples, but when the Spanish seller offered me a heavily discounted price for buying all three, it seemed churlish not to accept.

I was rather more enamoured by the NOS black-dialed J39027-70 'BreitBling clone'. Yes, again I already had an example in my collection, but it was something that I'd cobbled together from two watches, a couple of years ago - see below. The bezel and case are slightly scuffed and scratched and the dial lume is a bit iffy in places. NOS is always nicer.

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The third Racer J39 ? Well that had a white dial and will be the subject of another thread. Of more anon.