Navigating the Vintage Watch Market

Although I like to play one on Instagram, to be clear, I am not a watch dealer. However, for the last few years, I’ve employed the time-honored tradition of ‘trial and error’ to help me navigate the minefield that is today’s booming vintage watch market. My goal with this article is to try to pass on some of that hard won knowledge and experience. And in this installment, I’m going to focus on buying.

It’s a sellers market these days for the most part (assuming you’re talking about high quality vintage sports watches) and that means buying is a veritable shit-show. Insiders with deep pockets snap up the good stuff quickly. Low quality pieces get tampered with, retouched, polished, laser-welded, painted, and topped off with a little scoop of plaster mix. Hell, maybe they’re even topped off with some coffee grounds and mud to make them look like Mouton Rothschild when the reality is closer to a big jug of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill.

The apple of my eye — my gilt 5512 with chapter ring and exclamation point dial

So how do you navigate this minefield? One tactic is to buy from a professional. You’ve heard the names: Andrew Shear, Eric Ku, Matt Bain, HQmilton, Analogshift. If you can get one of these incredibly busy guys to respond to your email, text, or DM and agree to sell you a watch, rest assured, you will be paying pay a premium. They are in business and are out there to get the best compensation for the time and effort they put in to source the best watches. Often times they battle each other for the right to sell the best pieces; other times they work together to get the right piece in the hands of the right buyer. But if you need a Blueberry 1675 with a radial dial and a red hour hand, and you want someone to put their reputation behind its authenticity, you need these guys. Stay away from the myriad of Johnny-come-lately “watch dealers” that have recently sprung up on Instagram and the web like so many weeds. Many of these “dealers” are misrepresenting their goods if they even know what they have. Let me tell you a (not-so-much) secret: 99.9% of the unpolished 30 year old watches for sale should not have perfect case finishes and razor sharp chamfers. You are being sold a lie and sometimes a teenager is selling it to you. Stick to only the reputable dealers.

My gilt 5512 on the wrist

A word about Instagram: IG has done for the watch biz what eBay did for the beanie baby. It’s a revolution. The really good stuff will move within seconds via an Instagram posting. Case in point, I recently found my dream Submariner by this method and let me tell you, it is a special watch. The super dealers didn’t have one, the IWJG shows were barren and I was obsessed. One day a dealer in Germany posted this watch on his site and I jumped on it as fast as possible. He got 20 emails in 10 minutes, and somehow I was the lucky winner. It’s a gilt, chapter ring, exclamation point dial with pointed crown guards from 1962. Looking at this watch is like love at first sight, every damn time. Get on Instagram.

Another watch I found on Instagram was vintage Lapis Lazuli dial JLC Memovox. I’m sure most of you are familiar with the classic Memovox, but probably not with this dial. Go find another for sale; it’s not happening. Shit, you’d be hard pressed to find more than a few pictures of this watch via a Google image search. It’s that rare. Again, I found it on Instagram after looking for one for over 2 years. The rare watch you are looking for is out there somewhere and chances are it’ll pop up on Instagram. So keep scrolling. Talk to people. Get involved in the online watch community. It is fun and rewarding.

JLC Memovox with Lapis Lazuli dial

Another little success story I had involved scouring the watch forums, and a beautiful unpolished Heuer Camaro (feature photo). I had been shown a similar watch by a dealer friend, but of course, at a dealer price. I went on Chronotrader and found a comparable watch – another one located in Europe – for significantly less money. For better or worse, this lead to a yearlong search for the correct Gay Frères bracelet, which I found through a different seller in France. The bracelet arrived stretched out more than JT Snow picking an errant throw, but after six months with Hong Kong’s resident bracelet magician (Michael Young), I ended up with the beauty you see here.

If you cut out the dealer you can save beaucoup bucks, but you are running the risk of getting a watch in need of a serious overhaul, or worse. There is shipping and packaging to worry about, not to mention outright fraud. The best you can do in these situations is get references from the seller. It also helps to snoop around the message boards a bit. Someone that has a lot of postings is less likely to shit all over their reputation to make a little bit of money off of one sale. I love Chronotrader as a sales forum and I browse WatchRecon way too much for my own good.

In order to avoid getting ripped off you’ve got to do your research, and it’s part of what makes this hobby so rewarding. Any jerkwad can walk into Tourneau and plop down some cash for a mass-produced modern 47mm eyesore. However, you and I are looking for icons that have stood the test of time and lived lives of their own. It pays to know as much as you can about what you are buying. I started out on the Rolex Forums and spent countless hours pouring over the posts and pictures there. I’ve since moved on from the forums, but they remain an excellent resource whether you like TRF, Timezone, Vintage Rolex Forums, or whatever. Read up. Someone else has already asked the question you want to ask. There are lists of recommended sellers that have been vetted over thousands of transactions.

Another resource you need to be reading is the weekly column by my friend (and yours), Eric Wind over on Hodkinee. Now, I have benefitted from Hodinkee as much as the next watch collector over the years, but these days it seems it’s too often busy announcing the next MB&F musical spaceship. Not so with Eric’s fantastic columns. The man is a treasure to the vintage watch collecting community and I learn something with every article. Eric is a big proponent of eBay, but I’ve yet to see the benefit of it from a collectors standpoint. There is just too much to sift through for me. I will say, if you’re looking for something specific, it can’t hurt to add eBay to your search pattern. Lord knows people get lucky there (not to mention on Craigslist and at Goodwill). If you manage to find a score through one of these sites, good for you, but as with any of the buying options I’ve mentioned, it always pays to keep the golden rules of watch buying in mind: buy the seller, and if a deal is too good to be true, it probably is. Good luck out there.

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