There’s many reasons why selling your watch on commission could be the right option for you. First and foremost it means you might get more money. If you are dealing with a volatile item or an unknown item. Any watch where the value might change upwards will benefit from selling on commission as you will win that rise in value. Say you get offered £5,000 for a watch which the dealer plans to sell on for around the £6,000 mark. If that watch becomes more valuable between you selling it and the dealer selling it then the dealer pockets the difference. Say the watch sells for £10,000, the extra £4,000 all goes straight to the dealer. However, if you sell on commission than that rise will be added to the value the dealer owes you.
At The Classic Watch Buyers Club for instance the rate is set at 85% for the customer and 15% for the dealer. That way if the watch sold at £10,000 you get £8,500 which is £3,500 more than the initial offer. This is obviously an extreme example of a price rise but even mild rises see you pick up more money. But the questions lingers of exactly how this works as at times the watch industry can be very opaque with it’s business practices. Just to shine some light on it I will talk you through exactly how the commission system works.
To use the above example a watch is offered to the dealer and the dealer values the watch at £6,000 so would buy it for £5,000. If the customer thinks the value will increase or simply thinks that figure is to low they have two options, they can walk away and get another option or they can sell on commission. The conversation will take a couple of different paths depending upon the specifics but a good overview is as follows. The dealer will value the watch and agree a price of the watch with the customer, say the customer agrees to a minimum price of £6,500. So, the lowest amount of money the customer will make is 85% of £6,500 (£5,525) when the watch is sold.
The dealer will then talk through why the split is 85-15. The main reasons are the cost of marketing, listing the watch online, sellers fee on platforms such as eBay and Chrono24 and overall business costs as well as making a profit. Once that is done the watch will be checked over and made ready to be listed online. At The Classic Watch Buyers Club that includes listing it to our members first (to become a member you can either sign up with your email through our site or join our FB group https://www.facebook.com/groups/548652229786904), once done there will be a check of price and then the product listed.
Say between the watch being dropped off to being sold the price rises from £6,000 to £8,000 then the watch will be listed at £8,000. If the customer gets a slight discount and buys it for £7,750 then the original seller will be informed and the money sent over. As the watch sold for £7,750 the original seller will get 85% of that, £6,375 and the dealer will keep 15% £1,125. This is an instance where everybody wins. Obviously, price rises are difficult to predict but sometimes some amount of speculation can be worth it.
The other reason to consider selling on commission is if the watch is very valuable say high five figure to six figure, then the dealer might not want to spend that much money on one watch that might take a while to sell. In those instances, the dealer might only be able to offer a commission sale but worth shopping around and seeing what other companies are offering. Particularly, Watch Finder, Watches of Switzerland, and any local jeweller such as Finnies or Jamieson and Carry.
If you have any questions about selling a watch on commission, please leave a comment or email us at sales@theclassicwatchbuyersclub.com
