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Today’s blog prompt asked: “What’s the most expensive personal item you’ve ever purchased for yourself?”
Well, the question didn’t say what I paid for it — and that’s where this story gets interesting.
For 15 years, I owned a boutique that was part antique shop, part art gallery, and part home décor studio. We sold everything from fine furniture to WPA-era paintings, mid-century pottery, chandeliers, and, as a little “loss leader,” cases of $5 costume jewelry and watches.
To keep that jewelry case stocked, I’d hit every flea market, yard sale, and estate cleanout I could find. My “wholesale suppliers” were usually guys selling out of pickup trucks with cardboard boxes full of tangled necklaces, single earrings, and broken watches. One of them, a regular I bought from every week, sold watches for $1 each. He’d get them in bulk from pawnshops and watch repairmen—most just needed a new battery or band.
Every Sunday, I’d come home with a bag of 10–20 watches, sit at my workbench, polish the glass, pop in new batteries, and get them ready for my display case. One week at the flea market, buried among the pile, was a Cartier watch. I took one look and thought, “Yeah, right.” It wasn’t running, and the back wouldn’t open, so I tossed it in my desk drawer and forgot about it.
Fast forward several years later long after I closed my store. I was cleaning out my office one afternoon and found that same watch under a pile of old receipts and keys. Just for fun, I took it to a jeweler friend of mine and asked if he could replace the battery.
About five minutes into the job, I heard him muttering and pacing behind the counter. I asked, “What’s all the fuss?”
He looked up, eyes wide, and said, “Rich… do you know what this is?
I said yes a Cartier knock off
He said No my friend — it’s a real Cartier 18K White Gold Diamond Bezel 23mm Baignoire Quartz.”
I blinked. “A what?”
He grinned. “In plain English, it’s a fifteen-thousand-dollar watch.”
I nearly fell off the stool. I told him, “Well, I paid a dollar for it, so I guess I got a decent return.”
To this day, that watch sits in my collection as both a reminder and a conversation piece. The moral? In the antiques business, the real treasures don’t always shout — sometimes they tick softly from the bottom of a dusty box.
So yes, the most expensive personal item I ever purchased for myself was a $15,000 Cartier 18K White Gold Diamond Bezel 23mm Baignoire Quartz watch.
I just happened to buy it for one dollar.
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Great story.
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