You can hear many bad stories of purchases from Ebay. Here is a small article to make you aware of the risks and how to minimize the risk.
Here are the risks:
-not or badly working watch
-fake watches
-frankenwatches (as in the word Frankenstein: several not originally matching parts to assemble a watch) This happens a lot on crowns, dials, cases, hands,...
-redials / refurbished / repainted / restored
-not receiving the watch
Here is the list of tips to minimize the risk:
-check the legitimacy of the seller. How many feedbacks he has, better be long term feedbacks and not all in the last month. Many sellers create fake accounts to rate their selling account.
-contact the seller, ask him the movement condition
-pictures must include the movement: you need to inspect it, it has to be clean, not rusted
-check on Google for similar models and compare
-check the serial number
Not many blogs share this golden tip: go on Rolland Ranfft's watch movement database: http://www.ranfft.de/cgi-bin/bidfun-db.cgi?12&ranfft&2&2uswk
