Expense Report #6

I slipped this week: I bought a watch on eBay. It's a Japanese-market Seiko model (which means it is not officially sold in this country*) with an automatic movement that I've had my eye on for a long time. It's regularly available on eBay from several sellers, so I could have bought it at any time, or if I'd waited a while it's likely I still would have been able to find it from one of the same sellers at about the same price, but almost all those who sell it are located in either Hong Kong or Singapore.

[*This may be incorrect; the watch's price tag is in English and the price is in US currency.]

I try to avoid making purchases from international sellers, because there is always a bit of a question as to whether or not your package will actually arrive, and what condition it will be in. (This is not prejudice; it's simply a fact that the vast majority of the fraud committed on eBay originates outside of the U.S.)

A seller's feedback score can help provide some sense of that person's reputation and reliability, but I have yet to come across anything that I wanted badly enough that I could not eventually locate from a domestic seller. Such was the case with this watch: the seller I purchased from is in Texas, the watch is new, and it's coming with its original box and paperwork, which swayed me to make the purchase (those last two are often not available from the overseas sellers, another sign that you may not be dealing with someone entirely legitimate).

I also bought a few items of clothing over the weekend. I've developed an affinity for JCPenney's American Living label clothing, even though too much of it comes with a gaudy embroidered eagle logo. But the quality is good (it's designed and manufactured for Penney by Ralph Lauren) and, due to the way Penney operates its business, it is almost always on sale at very reasonable prices. We were heading to Salem on Saturday, and the Northshore Mall is on the way, with one of the only Penney stores in our area, so we made a stop.

I've been lucky enough on previous shopping trips to find a couple of AL shirts without logos (like Polo, they seem to make a few logo-free items each season) and I found another on this trip, on a clearance rack for 70% off its original $50 list price, which was just too good a deal to pass up. I also got a couple of pairs of shorts, something I know I'm going to need to buy each year anyway.

The shorts looked big, and since I had forgotten to bring my tape measure I compared them to a different brand's shorts, and found that they were approximately two inches larger in the waist than their tagged size (confirmed by a trip to the fitting room). Some of the shorts also have the eagle logo, but these don't; they have only a small brand tag above the back pocket that is easily removed. (It may have been my imagination, but it seemed like they may be cutting back on the percentage of stuff with a logo.)

There was an additional 15% discount on top of the already-low prices, so I walked away having spent less than $50 for three items. I might have bought more stuff, like store-brand polo shirts for $12 in a wide array of attractive shades (polos are almost as disposable to me as undershirts, and I typically buy/replace a few each summer), but they had none of the colors I wanted in my size. Hopefully I'll be able to get them on a future visit, but maybe it's just as well I didn't end up spending as much this time.