When all the time is tyranny time

March 23, 2009 12:10 PM

Are Iraqi wrist watches with Saddam Hussein's face on them valuable?

My friend who was living in Iran is now in Damascus and keeps finding Saddam Hussein wrist watches in the market there. The shop-keepers say that they were hocked by refugees who had been guards or military officers and received them as gifts, and generally quote a price around $100 apiece. I have google searched and ebay searched for anything about their value, but all I have found is a photo book and a few scattered listings on ebay - no real indications as to what the market is, or whther there is any market. Any hints as to where I might look?

(She also found some great stamps from Yemen with pictures of JFK and I am similarly having a hard time finding value, but that is because there are too many links rather than too few.)

posted by milagu to shopping (4 answers total)

A friend bought me a similar watch (the first one) in China with Mao Zedong for about 10 USD. With the quality of the picture of Saddam, I can't imagine these being worth much.
posted by DonSlice at 12:22 PM on March 23, 2009

Oh - I saw some Mao watches in China too - but at least the ones I saw were cheap and mass produced tourist items. These are nice, gold-plated swiss watches.
posted by milagu at 12:25 PM on March 23, 2009

None of that stuff is worth much of anything. (The fact that your friend "keeps finding" these watches ought to be ample evidence of this.) Such watches *might* be worth $10 to you for their kitsch value, but even that's a matter of opinion.

The stamps are worth very little too. These were produced in mass quantity for the stamp collecting market (often, stamps like that weren't ever actually sold for use) and weren't ever very expensive. The stamp collecting market is miniscule now, and these were never hard to find. By way of comparison, I just bought a book of Romanian stamps - about 3000 of them, all unused and in great shape, with many "blocks" of stamps, going back to the 1940s . . . for $86. Even then, I may have overpaid. I'm just going to use them for artwork and stuff like that.
posted by Dee Xtrovert at 12:41 PM on March 23, 2009

They might be worth something more way down the line, but with something mass-produced it would be WAY down the line. A friend of mine collects WW2 medals, of all sorts. He has american, russian, and nazi medals. Some are a little valuable, but even now, well over 50 years after the fact, I dont think any of them are worth more than a hundred dollars. But they have personal value to him, thats why he bothers to collect them. So if YOU think they're cool, might as well get one or two, but dont get them with the expectation of big payoff.
posted by CTORourke at 3:00 PM on March 23, 2009