http://www.hodinkee.com/watch-heist-armed-robbers-steal-up-to-1-million-gbp-in-watches-from-uks-selfridges 
As in any high-dollar industry, shady stuff does happen in the watch world. But rarely is there a full-on heist. Wednesday, a group of robbers attacked a UK department store and made off with a duffel bag of watches. Here's the story so far.
Anyone who has ever visited a watch boutique will know that security tends to be a priority. And rightly so. When you have a room full of pocket-sized baubles priced in the tens- and hundreds-of-thousands of dollars, it only makes sense, right? And here is where things get interesting with this story.
At Manchester's Selfridges, one of the largest high-end department stores in the UK, three men charged into the store in broad daylight, wearing bright jumpsuits and balaclavas no less (not recommended watch boutique wear, by the way), carrying an axe and crowbars, and launched an assault on the watch concession.
Smashing cases, they loaded up their loot into duffels and charged right back out the door, with customers and staff watching the entire time, and hopped into their trusty getaway Mercedes Benz, driven by a fourth man. News sources are placing the estimated value of the hundred or so timepieces anywhere between 500,000 and 1 million GBP ($800,000 - $1.6 million).
The whole ordeal took less than a minute and a half, and the robbers really seemed to know what they were doing. The UK's Mirror quotes Detective Constable Adam Cronshaw as saying the criminals "were very particular about the watches they selected," taking pieces from Audemars Piguet, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Hublot, and Cartier. What we bet the robbers didn't think about is just how traceable all these watches are with serial numbers, etc. Police are obviously encouraging customers around the UK to be suspicious of any discounted watches that may appear over the next few weeks.
