Everybody knows a watch tells time and most of them sit on your wrist, but if you are looking at watches on eBay, here are a few more things to consider.

In no particular order, watch value is based on prestige, complexity, rarity, and the demand for that particular watch on that particular day. I guess you could say some people are pretty particular, eh?

Prestige is hard to measure, though you can sense it after a while. Prestige is what makes Rolex watches expensive. It is what makes a Cartier watch more expensive than a technically superior watch of another brand. In fact, prestige is what makes  mechanical watches more desirable than  quartz ones-  the people who make it their business to buy and sell watches have decided, individually and collectively, that workmanship, not accuracy, is the  thing they prize. Voila: prestige.  Prestige is really the reason a gold watch will cost more than a gold filled one or a stainless steel one. Prestige is manifested in the desire for originality instead of restoration or modification. Prestige also sometimes takes the form of reverse snobbery, as is the case with collectors who will disdain a highly advertised marque in favor of one that is obscure and under the advertising radar.

Complexity of watches is mostly impractical. You can pay thousands of dollars to get a watch that "remembers" Leap Year or you can simply buy a new one every four years. Or, you might actually buy a watch that has no calendar function at all. Functions like calendars, stopwatches, etc., are known as "complications" and, as I have said before they are really toys and gadgets, mostly, or a watchmaker's ways of showing off. Now and then, someone will need a stopwatch, or a handy graph to calculate air (or production) speed based on a certain number of measurable events in a certain period of time, but those people are far more likely to use a handheld computer to do so these days, than to use their wristwatch.  The cost of a 19th century watch that has a simple, but entertaining "erotic automaton" might well exceed the cost of an entire library of adult videos, plus the machine to view them. Granted, the watch is a little smaller and easier to conceal...    

Rarity is a funny thing, too.  Before the web and eBay, most people would buy things locally, including watches, both "everyday" ones and collectible ones.  Or they might visit a show or conference. They might even travel to another city to look at watches in a store that specialized in them. Or, they might look at catalogs, lists or brochures prepared by dealers and manufacturers.  Of course, today, they look at the Web, certainly including eBay. And as a result, they no longer have to rely (for instance) on the brochure sent out by the Hamilton Watch company that touted the revival of the Boulton watch. When that  brochure came out, it said that original Boultons were rare and highly prized.  Well, they are pretty highly prized (certainly by me), but any given day will yield you three or four examples on eBay.  The same can be said about the Rolex Oyster, which is really not rare at all. However, for years, the used market was mostly concentrated in pawn shops and jewelry stores, where one or two might be displayed and the price was definitely based on what the dealer figured you could pay. 

But rarity also has another side. When the Great Retro Wristwatch Revival of the early 1980s took off, people would pay a fortune for anything that was rectangular, or even round and old looking. Then, as Japanese collectors became a force, more and more people began looking in drawers and jewelry boxes and safe-deposit boxes and, suddenly, these watches weren't rare at all.  That doesn't mean they are worthless by any means, but they have been coaxed out of their hiding places. Demand has uncovered hidden supply.

Which lead us to demand.  If someone steals my grandfather's Rolex Daytona from my baby brother, I might just do anything to get him another one. However, I just need one, at least until he leaves it on the edge of a pool table again (yeah, right). So, for the week or two that I may be looking, I am on a mission and Demand is through the roof. Once I have my Daytona, I will leave the marketplace and all of those guys who watched prices go up will sit and shake their heads as they watch them go back down.  And on any given day, there may or may not be some person or group of people looking for, say a 1948 Mickey Mouse watch, or a Spiro Agnew one, or   Twelve 14K Gold Hamilton Brocks to be given to the wedding party of a guy whose name is Brock.  This specialized demand  includes the guy who will buy anything that ticks or who will buy anything that costs $50 or less, or the woman whose son broke his father's watch while dad was away on a business trip. But one day the guy who buys anything that ticks runs out of interest, or gets hit by a bus, or falls in love. And the market changes. Of course, that other kind of demand, the demand based on a lot of people needing to know what time it is, it's out there, too. And it can be manipulated by advertising, publicity, movie star sightings, etc.    

Now, many of these concepts seem hard to measure, at least for us amateurs. It's an inexact thing. If you had the money and the time, you could calculate the exact percentage of humidity in the air, or even hazard a guess at the likelihood of rain on any given day. OR, you can walk outside and look at the sky, I would suggest that the same "seat of the pants" factors that help you decide whether or not to carry your umbrella- those hundreds of unrecognized calculations you  make every day- are the  factors you can begin to observe and assimilate when you look at watches. You have a little more knowledge than you started this guide with, or at least a different way of thinking about it, and now you can go forth and  influence the phenomenon yourself.

I hope you have found this guide helpful. I have written other guides on watches and on a variety of topics.  Please give me your vote of "helpful" on this one and then take a glance at some of the others.

You might even enjoy my eBay Blog: All over the map.

Many Thanks

WT