Oi! That’s my stolen watch!
Jamie Heaslip spots his €6k Lions memento on Instagram FIVE years after it was robbed
A VALUABLE watch stolen from Jamie Heaslip five years ago has now surfaced online, the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal.
The priceless Breitling was given to the Irish rugby star as a memento of his tour with the Lions in 2013.
Each player was presented with an inscribed watch as a testament to their clash with Australia. But this week Heaslip’s featured on an Instagram account belonging to a German-based watch collector.
Normally, such a watch – a Breitling 01Chronomat – would sell from upwards of €6,000 but this one is a memento of Heaslip’s tour and – with the inscription – it is priceless to the sporting hero.
When the image appeared on Instagram it had Heaslip’s name and the date on the back.
‘Today I’m sharing a quite iconic piece with you: my @breitling Chronomat 01 – issued to @jamieheaslip during the @britishandirishlions,’ said the unsuspecting poster. Former Irish captain Heaslip was
‘In Germany we don’t know much of rugby’
clearly caught by surprise at the reappearance of his treasured memento – especially after he was tagged in the post:
‘Can I ask how u got this? It was stolen off me in November 2103.’ Heaslip responded.
The German watch collector told the MoS this weekend that he bought it in good faith from a seller on eBay, three years after it was apparently stolen from Heaslip.
He also provided the MoS with receipts of his purchase.
‘I bought the watch in May 2016 on eBay. The seller was a guy from Riga, Latvia. I‘m just a watch lover so I used to look on eBay for watches very often and sometimes you can make a bargain there. So it was with the watch of Jamie. I was looking for a Breitling Chronomat 01 and I won the auction.
‘The watch came with boxes and a Breitling service receipt from a Latvian jewellers.’
He said he thought Heaslip had sold the watch and that was why he tagged the rugby star in the Instagram post.
‘I did not think anything bad about it. In Germany we don’t know much about rugby,’ he said.
‘So I googled Jamie Heaslip to know to whom this watch was issued, but I did not wonder about it. He might have sold it or anything like this.’
The watch was nice but it was too big for my wrist so I sold it again, one month later in June 2016. So I just had the watch a couple of weeks,’ he said.
Until yesterday I did not know it was stolen. I post pictures here on Instagram of watches that I owned. Sharing the love for fine timepieces in the community, as there are many watch collectors around here. And so I decided to share a picture of Jamie’s watch and the whole story started.’
He also said he sent Heaslip information on the whereabouts of the watch and how he got it.
‘I‘m very sad about this and I already sent Jamie all the information of the seller and buyer of the watch,’ he said.
I had to take my post offline because people are going crazy here and started to offend me.
‘I‘m receiving hateful messages all day long... that’s very sad, because I did not want to harm anybody here. I also tried to help Jamie as much as I could. But instead I’m just blamed here.’
Heaslip, who is expecting his first child with his wife Sheena in the coming weeks was unavailable for comment this weekend.
Despite the loss of the watch, Heaslip is doing well and the company Sabra Management, which he set up in 2010, had accumulated profits of €190,000 last year, with its cash pile increasing to €91,031.
However, pre-tax profits at the company which represents his offfield commercial deals fell by 18% last year, to €54,098 from €66,048