Some Lessons I Have Learned in Buying and Selling Vintage Watches

    If you wanted to explore the vintage watch buy and sell business and you are the first one in your family to engage with it, there is a big chance that on your first try, you will experience frustration on how the business works. Since no one in my family knows about the business, they do not have any idea on how to guide me before I engage with the business. Yes, it was frustrating at first but I did not lose hope. I can say this now with so much optimism that, as you learn the ropes or the “ins and outs” of the business, the reward is enormous. On my first try of the business, I really paid a handsome “tuition fee” on learning the business. You have to pay for the lessons you acquire while doing the business. Sometimes when you fail, it is really hard because a lot of money is lost from buying a vintage watch that you cannot eventually sell. But again, do not be discouraged if you really wanted to succeed in the business.

    I have some lessons that I have learned in vintage watch buy and sell business and I am sharing them with you.

1.     Don’t be Greedy - As a buyer of vintage watches, I always compete with other watch buyers of how many watches I have bought in a day. I later learned that my compulsive buying pattern is not a good idea after all. I maybe buying lots of vintage watches but I am also buying vintage watches that are not working and not easy to repair. The not repairable vintage watches add up to my losses and make my investment capital to go down the drain. If someone wants to sell a broken watch to you and you know that it cannot be repaired anymore, practice saying NO. The mentality of most Filipinos is, we are always afraid of saying NO because of our “pakikisama” (smooth interpersonal relationship) attitude.  We might be thinking that if I buy this broken watch from the trader, he will be back to sell a good vintage watch to me. That is always not the case. If that watch trader finds another vintage watch, he will sell it to another buyer. And it happens most of the time. I have one example where I lost money on a watch that I really liked. Someone sold to me a Vintage Breitling quartz and it was not working, I asked my technician if the watch can be repaired and he said yes. My watch technician believed that the watch is repairable and there are available watch parts without even checking first some stores in Manila that sell vintage watch parts. I bought the watch and I paid the trader around Php30,000(Us650) for that Vintage Breitling. I later found out that some parts are not available in the Philippines and even on the internet! I was not able to recover my investment with that watch. Even if your technician says yes, think many times before buying any watch that you know has a small chance of available parts. It is you alone who will decide because it is your money after all.

2.     An issue of Brassing on any Gold Plaque Case - Brassing in the gold plaque cases are not easy to repair.  You have to buy gold to repair the brassing. The problem is that the color of the old gold plaque cases are different from the new gold available in Manila today. Sometimes I took a chance with a Vintage Omega that has lots of brassing. I was hoping that it can be repaired. Contrary to my belief, the repair from the goldsmith adds more damage to the gold plaque case because the gold color that was applied was very different from the gold color of the case. If brassing is present on the gold plaque case, Buy the watch (if it has ONLY a nice dial and movement) with a lesser price and sell the case to anyone whom you know who separates gold from the watch case. There are people who do it for a living. They separate the gold from the stainless steel case and sell the gold. If you are done selling with the gold plaque case, keep the dial, the hands, and the movement and keep a note of what kind of case you have taken them out. You can also sell the parts one by one and make a profit from the parts. Actually, it is more profitable in selling watch parts than selling the whole watch! :) 

 Vintage Omega Seamaster Automatic Cal 552 in Gold Plaque Case Watch

3.     Knowledge is Power - Do not buy a watch that you are not familiar with. When I started buying and selling watches, I said No to buying and selling Rolex because I don’t have enough knowledge on the brand. If you buy Rolex, be sure to study Rolex first because you might end up buying a watch with all original parts but does not correlate with each other. Sometimes the back case does not correlate with the model and serial number, the bracelet is not right with the watch, and so on. It is really true that Knowledge is Power. Always have in handy of some information booklet before buying a Rolex or any vintage watch for that matter.