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Old 16 September 2019, 07:50 AM   #8
Haywood_Milton
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Join Date: Jun 2008
Real Name: Yes, it is !
Location: Cheshire & Mersey
Watch: Military issue Sub
Posts: 1,319
The messenger's purpose may be to raise his profile more than to help a stranger.

Laws on title, liability and so on in the UK are well established and enforced. Nemo dat quod non habet.

If the report has a basis of truth, it may be that the auction house is waiting (perhaps as per their Ts & Cs) for more details of the records relating to the watch to be confirmed, to see if the watch can be confirmed to be stolen. Many watches have been reported stolen fraudulently (their owners themselves having sold them before or after the reports) or are legitimately recovered after loss, but without being removed from the stolen lists. In short, a watch appearing on a stolen list is commonly not correctly there. Only this week I had a positive match on a GMT-Master II 16713......which had previously been recovered by my staff only a year before, when offered in-store and they held it. We thereafter legitimately purchased it from the insurers of the victim, with his full agreement, but no-one had confirmed it with the relevant stolen register, so it flagged again when we checked it before sale. 48 hours later and it's all sorted.

The auction house may be very willing to refund a watch if it is confirmed to be subject of a live and correct stolen claim, but that can take some days at least to establish.

I disagree with the messenger's claim that it will take a year and the watch will "inevitably" be lost. That is demonstrable nonsense.

The last couple of years I have lectured the UK's police forces on high value watch crime and could write pages on the subject, with examples. I regularly advise individual forces, insurers, asset recovery teams, POCA investigators and others. With the full facts, it is unlikely there would be much room for uncertainty as to liability here.

Without knowing the facts of this specific case, all pitch-forks should be returned to the shed. I'll be surprised if the circumstances are entirely as presented but let's see.

H
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