03 Jan 2014, 03:03
Guys, for the I-don't-know-how-many-eth time, NOS is NOT a description of condition; it's a description of the watches' history! It means...purchased from the factory for resale, never sold, and put into storage (I think "dead stock" is the UK term). There is absolutely nothing there that even suggests the watch is still in any particular condition. "Mint", on the other hand, carries an implicit and specific meaning...new, flawless, as it was when it left the factory (how many are willing to argue with me about THAT?..if so, I would hand you over to the coin collectors, who, after all, invented the term). How these two terms came to be synonymous is a complete mystery to me, but I think some effort needs to be made to keep them separate (different words mean different things, and here's a textbook example of how important those distinctions can be). I've seen watches at NAWCC shows that were called "NOS" by the seller, which, having been poorly stored, were in awful cosmetic condition! The sixty solid gold Pulsars I got from New York were all NOS in the truest sense (never worn, stored as unsold stock), but, due to handling and moving around without their boxes to protect them, only a handful (six, seven, maybe, depending on how fussy you wanted to be) were still in what I would call "mint" condition. I'm not suggesting for a second that there was any attempt to fool or deceive anybody here (there are pictures, after all!); it's just the wrong term to use to convey condition (and the pics do a better job of that than any verbal description, anyway).