- Joined
- Mar 30, 2019
- Messages
- 5,117
Lot of naive new collectors are being misled, lied too and conned by IW and most of the so called expert guests, disgusting is mild for my feelings towards the shysters.It’s news such as this that makes me so mad atIW.
Bear with me while we think what that *might* look like….
£45k on 89 watches would be just over £500 each. Now most of IW watches sell at around the £350 or so average, so let’s assume this poor collector bought 30 of IW’s better quality, Swiss Made auto watches (Matthey Tissot etc) at an average of around £800 each - that cost them £24,000. That leaves 59 watches at £21k so the remaining watches would have cost around £350 each - most likely Solar Time or Earnshaw, or similar.
Valuing that collection now would realise the seller around £500 each for the Swiss Watches (being generous, unless these were very collectible) so £15k, and around a tenner each for the Chinese-made others, so around £600. Let’s be generous because this is all just ‘rule of thumb‘ to approximate what is most likely, and let’s therefore double that to £1200.
So, thanks to Peter, Mike, Kevski, and the others, this collector has turned their £45k nest egg into around £16k or so. It’s almost criminal (to my mind anyway).
By all means, buy a nice Earnshaw or a Solar Time, but buy it because you like the look and realise it’ll last a few years and then be uneconomic to repair. It’ll never really have a resale value greater than a tenner or so, especially after the first couple of years, but it might give you great pleasure. If the salespeople gave out that kind of vibe, I’d be happy, but with what they do now, I honestly think it’s disgusting!
It's a really hard one to put a value on his collection but agree with your assessment, with having so many watches, he's obviously not going to be wearing most of them much, so apart from any daily beaters they should all be in reasonable/good/like new condition, which in some cases can be good for reselling, but don't think it will have much of an effect, apart from the odd special with a Valjoux etc, not like it would if you were reselling a like new Hamilton, Tissot, Certina or any other mid-range Swiss or German watch brands which will keep their re-sale value a wee bit better.
While IW have a few decent/quality enough brands (Mathey-Tissot, Traser, Aviator, Swiss Military, VE), it's really hard to think of which watches would keep any good re-sale value. One of the problems is that although IW have the odd decent price, a lot of their watches can be purchased elsewhere cheaper, a huge range of Mathey-Tissot watches are available on Jomashop and even with duty/tax you can still make substantial savings over IW prices, so straight away your re-sale figures is going to have to be lower than prices for brand new versions of your watch. So if you’ve bought a watch on IW at £800 (might cost £600 at Jomashop) you’re already having to go sub £600 before you even start, figure in your watch is 2nd hand then as you say you’re down to £500ish just for starters, more likely £400ish or below even if it’s in really good condition.
With the bulk of IW watches, ie Solar-Time brands, Resultco brands, Fields crap & fashion watches, then they are almost entirely throw away watches with very little if any re-sale value, the only exceptions would be the odd Solar-Time watches, which are big, heavy and go to depths, thinking about the odd Nubeo/RGMT/Ballast but as these aren’t that expensive to start with, you’d need to keep them as like new to get anything back on them, again as you said, they’re not worth repairing, unless for sentimental reasons, so would have to be near pristine or you’re slashing the re-sale value way, way down. As for Resultco & Fields, don’t waste time, just bin.
Of course in reality, IMO, watch collecting should be a fun addiction, any thoughts of investments/re-sale value should never figure into the equation when buying a watch.
selling for £249, seconds hand up to usual tricks, stopping at 5 past, then dropping 10 secs
