Sell Your Watch
Selling your watch can be tricky, particularly if you are unused to the second hand market. There are basically three options, selling yourself, selling to a pre-owned dealer or selling on commission. Whilst there are pros and cons to all three, selling on commission is a happy middle ground which is always worth considering. It removes the risk of selling yourself and means you maximise the percentage of the sold value.
To demonstrate the benefit of commission, we have set out a typical comparison of private and commission selling. We go into more depth in our article here.
Selling Through CWBC
The above example shows a rough approximation of the costs when selling privately. The two largest being the cost of selling through a platform and the discount expected of private sellers. Companies like eBay and Chrono 24 make their money by taking a percent of each sale. Whilst the exact amount varies it will average 12.9% to a private seller. As well people will expect a discount as private sellers can't offer the same protections, authentication or warranties as a dealer. This is variable but around 10% is a reasonable expectation. Presuming the watch is in full running order you will end up with only £7,465 from a £10,000 watch.
In comparison a watch sold on commission will face smaller platform fees (possibly no platform fees depending upon sale). If we presume some minor cleaning or repair work needs to be done we can do it at wholesale cost and our insurance policy will cover the cost of handling high value goods. We will also handle all the photography, marketing, customer service and postage. If we do have to pay platform fees then they will average 7% rather than 12.9%. We will take a fee of 7.5% of the sale to cover running costs of the business. This leaves you with a take home of between £9,015 to £8,115, depending upon which platform it sells on, from a £10,000 watch.
That leaves you with £1,550 more in your pocket.
So in short we would strongly recommend commissioning through CWBC to get the best value for your watch. If interested please email us here, sales@theclassicwatchbuyersclub.com.