A couple of weeks ago, I was given a $5,000 gift certificate to Forum Shops at Caesers Palace in Las Vegas. Now, I'm a huge shopper and Forum Shops is a mecca for shopping so I was extremely excited for my upcoming shopping spree. The thought of going to Gucci or LV and picking out whatever I wanted put a huge smile on my face. But then I started to think... why not use this gift certificate towards something I normally wouldn't buy. That's when I decided to buy a watch. I spent the next couple of days looking at watches online. I ultimately decided on a grey-faced Avenger.
If you're not familiar with Forum Shops, there's only a couple of watch stores - Tourneau and another store that sells Hublot, IWC, B&R, etc. Anyways, since Tourneau was the only Breitling AD in the mall, that's where I had to go. As soon as you walk into Tourneau, there's a nice Breitling display on the right hand side. In the display case was my grey-faced Avenger. I asked the SA if I could try it on. The first thing I noticed was how much smaller it wore. Now I don't have big wrists by any means, but the watch just looked disproportional to me. Bummer. I was so disappointed by this, I didn't bother to look at the other Breitlings. Walked over to the Omegas... nothing caught my eye. Tried on a Cartier Pasha... nice watch, but I'm 24 and this would be my only watch so no dice. Tried on a B&R... again, nice watch but not worth the money. Up next was a Tag Heuer (I forget the model). Again, nice watch but it lacked that "oomph" that I was looking for. Oh, I also tried on a nice IWC. The SA said, "You have great taste - this is a $20,000 watch." Lovely.
So I left. Went home to ponder. Did I need a $5k watch? Should I just re-do my wardrobe and not have to worry about shopping for the next few years? Nah! So the next day I went back to Tourneau. I immediately b-lined to the Breitling display and that's when I saw her - a beautiful white-faced Super Avenger sans arabic numerals. "Can I try this on please?" I immediately knew this was the watch for me. After a few minutes of debating whether or not I wanted arabic numerals, I decided against it. "How much to walk out with this watch right now?" I managed to negotiate close to a 20% discount, which isn't special, but Tourneau is notorious for not discounting so I was pretty happy. Pulled out the gift certificate and that's when I was informed that they don't discount if you're using gift certificates. I called Caesers Palace and they confirmed that to be true. Bummer. This is when I started to play over a few scenarios in my mind. The smart thing to do would have been to buy a Rolex Submariner or Panerai and immediately sell it (I would probably get close to retail) and then buy a S.A at a huge discount, but that seemed like a *LOT* of work, and I would have to pay the difference out of pocket (The Submariner and Panerai would have been closer to $6,000 after tax).
OR I could just hand over the gift certificate, the sales associate could hand over the watch, and we could go on our merry ways. That's what I decided to do. I wore the watch out that night and received several compliments. I see a ton of people with Super Avengers, but they're all either with black or blue dials and white sub-dials. I've never seen someone else with a Super Avenger like mine. The wrist presence it commands is absolutely amazing, and for a watch as big as it is, it's easy to wear.
Anyways, I've had the watch for a couple of weeks now - worn it every day. Absolutely love it and never want to take it off.
(I've posted this pic in almost every post I've replied to because it's the only one I have right now)
