Watch Selling Guides
Everything worth knowing before you sell, written out properly by the people who buy these watches every day. No prices, no hype, nothing you need to give us an email address to read.
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How to Sell a Luxury Watch: Every Route Compared
The five ways to sell a luxury watch, compared on speed, certainty, effort and risk. What to gather first, and how to tell a real offer from a hook.
Read the guide →Selling
The routes to a sale, what each one costs you in time and certainty, and how to run the process so it ends well.
- The Seven Photographs That Get an Accurate Offer How to photograph a watch for valuation with a phone: the seven shots a specialist needs, and why a flattering photo works against you. 7 min
- Shipping a Watch: What Insurance Really Covers Declared value is not insurance. What carriers exclude for jewellery and watches, and the packing and paperwork that make a claim actually payable. 8 min
What drives value
What genuinely moves an offer, what does not, and the well-meant mistakes that quietly cost sellers money.
- What Box and Papers Actually Do to an Offer Which parts of a full set move a watch valuation, which barely register, and why the same box matters enormously on one reference and hardly at all on another. 8 min
- Why a Fresh Polish Can Cost You Polishing removes metal permanently and a buyer can see it. What a refinish does to lug geometry, and when a service before a sale is worth doing. 7 min
- How Luxury Watch Valuation Works The real factors behind a luxury watch value: model demand, reference, condition, completeness, year and market, and how to get an accurate figure. 4 min
Know your watch
Reference numbers, serials and condition. How to read your own watch the way a buyer reads it.
- Where to Find Your Watch's Reference and Serial Number Where Rolex, Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet, Omega and Cartier engrave the reference and serial number, and how to read them without opening the watch. 7 min
- How a Buyer Reads Your Watch in 90 Seconds The order a specialist inspects a watch in, what each step is testing, and how to run the same checks on your own watch before anyone else does. 8 min
- How to Spot a Fake Luxury Watch Practical checks to help spot a counterfeit luxury watch: weight, movement, engravings, the date and paperwork, and when to get professional authentication. 4 min
Safety
Scams and their tells, shipping and insurance, and selling a watch that came to you through an estate.
- Eight Scams That Target Watch Sellers The frauds aimed at people selling a watch, not buying one: the bait and switch, the reversed payment, the handling swap. How each works and its tell. 10 min
- Selling an Inherited Watch: What to Do First A watch from an estate: who may sell it, where the paperwork hides, handling multiple heirs, and why an insurance appraisal is the wrong number. 9 min
