A. Lange & Söhne

Because the OP (tembusu92) is a longer-term member and not a first-time poster on WPS, I should have said nothing about prices proactively and instead waited to see where this discussion went. Maybe it would have been fine.

This was my thinking, to share my thought process. I've participated in watch forums on other websites that have no restrictions on monetary or price discussions. As a result, "How much is this worth?" "What should I pay for this?" and other such discussions become frequent enough such that they change the flavor of the forum. Those forums become more transactional and less about sharing horological knowledge and enjoying/discussing watches.  

The WPS community has always had clear rules to prevent WPS from becoming like those other forums. That's one of the many things that I love about this place. Here is the relevant portion of that WPS rule: "Price and seller discussions tend to overwhelm the other more subtle, though equally important, aspects of the aficionado experience. Therefore, any posts with street/market prices as the primary subject must be submitted to a moderator for review first." 

In this case, the OP (tembusu92) -- who has been on WPS for a while -- was appropriately respectful of that WPS rule right from the start, in his post about making an offer. He never mentioned prices/dollar values. After I noticed that, I asked others to do the same proactively, by not discussing prices. Instead, I should have waited to see how the discussion evolved because replies such as "The range for these in the last 3 years has been from $X to $Y from my observation" would of course be fine. I was motivated to step in proactively because I don't want WPS to become a place that transactional people visit only to find out how much they should pay for a used watch. I'm very sensitive to that -- perhaps overly sensitive -- in my desire to protect and preserve the spirit of our little corner of the internet.   

 

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