A touching non-eBay rare Fossil Defender find

As collections grow we start to branch out to other forums to find nice pieces without having to pay wishful seller premiums. Anyone can start a website and attempt to sell collectible Fossil watches for $129. Likewise, anyone can sell watches on eBay and buy low with one user ID and sell high with another user ID…...we know who they are and over the years we’ve learned to avoid those traps. All of this to say in 2018 it isn’t difficult to still obtain vintage timepieces online at a reasonable price.

The purpose of this post isn’t to list out these other online avenues for great finds, but to highlight a nice story that worked out well in our ongoing attempt to finish the Fossil DE collection.

The rarest DE Defenders are the 4 similar models DE-1524, DE-1525, DE-1535 and DE-1536.

Some would argue that the DE-1542, DE-1543 and DE-1544 are rarer, but at least those appeared in several US catalogs. The 4 similar models only appeared in one Defender catalog, which we featured a few months ago.

Collecting tip is the more desirable Defenders and to some extent Speedways appear for sale in Germany more so than anywhere else and our site metrics would indicate that to be true - we have a lot of German collectors. I don’t always search German classifieds, but when I do I find a rare Defender and in late 2017 a DE-1535 made a grand appearance on a German classified site.

Common concerns dealing with classified sites anywhere is reliability and trustworthiness of the seller. Add a few thousand miles between us and questions rise up like will she actually ship it? What guarantees will I have? How bad is the exchange rate?

Swallowing my nerves I sent off a simple email expressing interest and name dropping the Collectors Club and to my surprise Nadja, the seller was very personable and I knew instantly I could trust her. After a few awkward email exchanges with the language barrier we had a deal! Like all watches she bought it to wear it and realized it was too heavy for a woman's wrist even after swapping out the original brown strap for a black one. Nadja even went as far as sending me pictures of the watch all packaged up and a parcel number for tracking.

After a few weeks the DE-1535 made it's way to Ohio where it's proudly displayed with all the other DE Defenders. I like stories like this and had to share -- we're all people and these unique interactions is what makes collecting anything fun.  In the end I have a fun story to tell, a rare Defender watch and an extra OEM strap for another Defender that needed a good strap and I'll save that for another story. Happy Collecting!