An Arizona man hit a $35,000 jackpot with a watch he bought for six dollars at a thrift store in Phoenix.
Zach Norris said he immediately knew it when he found a rare 1959 Jaeger-LeCoultre watch for $5.99 at the Goodwill store. As it turns out, the company made fewer than 1,000 of the unusual diving watches.
“The center face dial moved, and when that happened, that’s when I knew it was real,” Norris said in a report from KTVK. “I didn’t even want to give it to her to scan. I was like, ‘You can scan it in my hand if you want to.’ I just didn’t want to let it go.”
Norris said he had a couple of good offers for the watch, and it ended up listed on a watch collectors’ website called Hodinkee.com. A collector in San Francisco bought the watch for $35,000, and threw in a $4,000 watch to sweeten the deal.
Norris said the windfall means he and his fiancé can afford to pay for a nice wedding. He also donated some of his profits back to Goodwill.
He says anyone can do what he did. “You can do it. Research everything. Just take your phone in there and if you see something that looks goofy, you haven’t seen it before, Google it,” Norris said. “You never know.”
