What Your Watch Is Actually Worth
What seven dealers told me about margins, fees, and the price on your screen.
I shall start by thanking Eric Ku (Loupe This), Alex Woodmansee (AJW Watches), Ben Dunn (Watch Brothers London), Samantha Haizelden (Watch Concierge Services), Silas Walton (A Collected Man), Tim Green (Subdial Watches), and Sean Song (S. Song Watches) for their candour and willingness to share the inner workings of their businesses for this essay.
I appreciate you all 🤝
There is a number you carry around in your head right now, and that is the amount you firmly believe your watch is worth. You likely stitched it together from Chrono24 listings, WatchCharts graphs, and gossip from WhatsApp dealer chats or Buy/Sell groups; in all likelihood, you treat this number as a cold, hard fact. The problem is, the number is wrong!
The secondary watch market is one of those places where the gap between what you see and what’s actually happening is enormous, and yet almost nobody talks about the details in any meaningful way. Dealers know the maths, but collectors mostly just, don’t! The space between those two realities is where disappointment, frustration, and the occasional ugly forum post are born.
So I did what any sensible Substacker (lol!) would do, and asked several dealers to walk me through it. I wanted to understand margins, operating costs, tax traps, platform fees, and all the other arm-wavery that sits between a listed price and the cash that ends up in someone’s bank account. What I got back was surprisingly candid, occasionally uncomfortable, and at least for me, quite illuminating.
This is a topic that affects every single person in the watch community, whether you’re buying your first Speedmaster or selling your fifth iteration of obscure JLCs, and it deserves more attention than it typically gets.
In this essay, we’ll start with what dealers actually earn (and lose), based on conversations with seven dealers operating across the market, from high-volume traders to high-end curators. Then we’ll look at how tax eats into margins, and break down what a listed price is actually made of, layer by layer.
For paid subscribers1, the part goes a bit deeper into the platform fee racket (and why Chrono24’s dominance costs you money too), the wire transfer trick that saves you ~3%, why ‘burning’ a watch is an expensive mistake sellers make, the cost of insurance and shipping, how crossing borders kills deals, why trust carries a measurable premium, the illusion of auction house transparency, how liquidity determines everything, and finally, a practical rule-of-thumb framework and reference table for reading any price you see online.
Whether you’re buying, selling, or just trying to make sense of the market, this should help you in some way.
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Estimated reading time: ~ 30 mins (with about ~10 mins free to all)
What dealers make (or lose)
This is the part I don’t see anyone talk about openly, so we will start here. I asked four dealers the same question: “What’s the realistic range for a margin in the secondary market?” The answers were pretty consistent, and probably lower than you’d expect.
Eric Ku co-founded and runs the Loupe This auction platform and has decades of experience at the sharp end of the trade. He confirmed that a range of roughly ~5% to ~30% covers most situations, though he stressed that obsessing over set margins can sometimes miss the point. “Rather than fixating on set margins,” he told me, “I think it’s most important to price a watch that is reflective of its quality and market price, which can vary.” Some dealers like to brag about fixed margins, but Eric isn’t convinced those claims always hold up in practice. For Loupe This, the buyer fee is a flat 10%, and they don’t bend on that. And if a consignor won’t pay the $500 flat fee, they simply don’t want them as a customer.
Alex who runs AJW Watches in London said his personal average margin has been ~5% to date, rising to ~7.5% before VAT in the last financial year. For the mainstream UK market, excluding high-end, rare, or unusual pieces, he suggested a working range of ~7.5% to ~15% as a reasonable starting point. He also made an important point about velocity; during the post-COVID hype cycle, he once bought a watch for £95,000 and sold it for £185,000. But, he says, those days are firmly behind us. On average, it’s about turning stock and making your money work for you, rather than sitting on inventory hoping the market moves in your favour.
Ben Dunn of Watch Brothers London, reported an average margin of ~11.4%, fairly consistent over the past couple of years. He typically buys or consigns at around a ~10% mark, dropping to ~8% for higher-value pieces. And then he said something that I think every collector should think about; “It’s not uncommon to make as little as 5% or less, even on consignment. I think on modern watches the margin is even thinner.”
Ben, and I’m sure most others, have sold watches at a loss, too. In fact, it probably happens more often than people think. His biggest hit was around £8,000 on an £11,000 purchase, for a skeleton perpetual that proved difficult to service and suffered from weak demand. When collectors see a dealer listing at what looks like a generous markup, they rarely consider that the same dealer might have just eaten a loss on their last three sales to keep the business moving.
Ben was also candid about consignment; he rarely takes pieces from people he doesn’t know or hasn’t dealt with before, because the risk is higher and, as he put it, “honestly it’s a very collaborative experience. I want to work with people I like and know.” About ~20% of his stock is consigned, and he’d like to grow that to ~50%, but only for watches valued at £20,000 and above, because once you factor in shipping, taxes, and warranty cover, anything lower doesn’t make sense for either party.
Samantha (Sam) of Watch Concierge Services tends to charge around ~9% with a minimum fee of £300. For a £30,000 watch, she might come down slightly, but it needs to be a flexible, case-by-case conversation. She also does something that not all other dealers do, which is to fix her fee at the start, based on the average of her suggested listing price and the expected sale price (rather than taking a percentage of whatever the final sale price ends up being). This protects her if the seller accepts a low offer, and gives the seller confidence that she’ll push hard for the best outcome.
Sam gave a good example of why online listed prices are higher than you might expect. If a watch is listed on her website for £30,000 and someone from the States buys it using PayPal without bothering to send a message first, she gets charged a ~5% PayPal fee. On a £30,000 sale, that’s £1,500, which all but wipes out her entire commission.
In this case, the expectation is for buyers to reach out and do a deal directly. The listed price is just a ‘shop window.’ Serious buyers would usually get in touch, agree terms, and pay by bank transfer. PayPal’s buyer protection might seem appealing from the buyer’s perspective, and I understand why, but it’s worth knowing that the cost of that protection is borne entirely by the dealer, and it’s significant enough to eat their whole margin on a mid-range sale. When you pay by card or PayPal without negotiating, you’re essentially paying a premium for convenience that the dealer receives none of.
Sam was also blunt about the reality of her overheads; “People can think that dealers are greedy for charging thousands, but you have to take out card fees, Chrono24 charge me £300 a month just for listing my watches, insurance is a pretty hefty chunk each year, travel and postage costs, and that’s before you even account for my time.”
I also spoke to three other dealers whose perspectives added useful texture because they operate at different price points and in different ways to the first three.
Silas Walton of A Collected Man (ACM) represents the high-end, low-volume edge of the spectrum. His consignment fees sit in the teens on average, dropping to high single digits only for something exceptionally desirable. For a good long-term client where the economics make sense, it might come down to around ~10%. When buying with his own capital, the calculus changes because he needs roughly ~20%+ for a deal to stack up - this is because he’s tying up cash, absorbing risk, and potentially sitting on a piece for an unspecified duration. (To be clear, we didn’t talk specific numbers for ACM, and the figures here are my own educated guesses which I think are in the right ballpark)
Silas made a point that I think reframes the whole margin conversation. “A percentage is too simplistic because what the broker brings to the table matters quite a bit,” he said. “Are they finding the right buyer? Protecting the maker’s market? Do they truly understand provenance and condition? The good intermediaries earn their fee by placing watches thoughtfully, as opposed to just listing them. At the end of the day, the intermediaries worth their salt are the ones thinking beyond the margin about things like curation, placement, and the long-term health of the market.”
There’s an important distinction here between ‘listing’ a watch and ‘placing’ a watch. ACM doesn’t just stick something on a website and hope for the best; they would probably see themselves as curators of extremely desirable watches. In addition, they kinda already know who wants these watches, and so they tend to protect the market for the makers and customers they work with. That kind of service obviously costs more, and honestly, it probably should.
Tim Green of Subdial operates more on the volume end of the spectrum, and his typical buy margin sits between ~6–12%, with the range depending on overall value and expected time to sell. Occasionally, he’s offered watches from other dealers at prices below market, and in those cases the margin can hit ~20–30%, but he’s clear that those are rather rare windfalls. He also confirmed something that reinforces Ben’s experience, which is that if a watch hasn’t sold within 90 days, he’ll sell it at a negative margin just to free up the capital. “It’s a game of striking a sale while watches are hot,” he said, “and not getting hung up when watches aren’t selling.” Some dealers, Tim noted, will push margins to ~50%+ on watches they consider ‘overlooked,’ but that’s a very specific, niche strategy and certainly not the norm.
Sean Song of S. Song Watches offered a perspective that I think bridges the gap between the volume dealers and the curators. His consignment fee is a flat ~10%, with a $1,000 flat fee for anything under $10,000 to cover costs. For buying in, his benchmark is ~20% margin to keep things safe, though it does vary as well. Interestingly, Sean actually prefers buying stock outright over consignment because it gives him more flexibility, irrespective of whether the deal ends up profitable or not. He only consigns if the client’s asking price is too high to justify him buying it in.
Sean made an astute observation about market segmentation as well; when someone offers him a basic GMT or Submariner, he directs them to higher-volume dealers because the price he’d offer would be much lower than what the volume guys can do on those mainstream references. He’d rather deal in more unusual watches where his expertise and client base add real value. “I honestly think there is a huge difference between volume sellers like us and very low-volume sellers like ACM,” he said. “For us it’s often less about individual watches, and more about making sure new collectors get a good deal and hopefully come back to us.”
Sean is also extremely transparent with his clients. He tells them upfront that his buy-in is usually at ~20% and consignment at ~10%, so they know what they’re dealing with and can decide between convenience and maximising their return. That kind of openness is refreshing, and I think it’s the kind of thing that builds the long-term trust which businesses like his depend on.
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So… across seven conversations with dealers operating at different price points, volumes, and geographies, the picture seems pretty consistent. For mainstream secondary market watches, excluding rare or unique pieces, dealer margins on consignment typically fall between ~5% and ~15%, with most averaging ~8–12%. Below ~5%, the deal isn’t worth anyone’s time. Above ~15% is possible on niche, unusual, or high-end pieces, particularly where the dealer is deploying their own capital and taking on real risk - in these cases ~20%+ is the benchmark. Of course, outliers do exist (either 50%+ on ‘overlooked’ watches, or negative margins on stale inventory), but the fat middle of this distribution is thinner than most collectors assume.
Tax kills deals
If there’s a single factor that explains why a dealer’s buy-offer feels like a lowball, it’s probably tax. Specifically, Value Added Tax (VAT), and the way it’s calculated under the Margin Scheme in the UK2.
Most major UK and EU dealers use the VAT Margin Scheme, which is designed to prevent double taxation on second-hand goods. Under this scheme, a dealer doesn’t pay VAT on the full sale price of a pre-owned watch (provided they bought it from a private individual). Instead, they pay VAT on the difference between what they paid and what they sold it for. Sounds reasonable, right?
The critical bit is that the margin is treated as VAT-inclusive. The tax isn’t added on top; it’s extracted from within. At the standard ~20% rate, HMRC takes 1/6th of the gross margin.
Let’s run a quick example. Say a dealer buys a GMT-Master II for £12,000 and sells it for £14,000. That’s a £2,000 gross margin, which looks healthy enough. But VAT is £2,000 ÷ 6 = £333. The dealer’s actual gross profit is now £1,667, and we haven’t even turned a light on yet.
It gets worse, because HMRC forbids dealers from deducting repair or service costs from the margin before calculating VAT. So if the dealer spent £500 getting that GMT serviced and polished before sale (a modest figure for a full service), the real picture looks something like - £2,000 margin, minus £333 VAT, minus £500 service cost, leaving £1,167 in supposed earnings. That’s an effective margin of ~8.3% on a sale that looked like ~14.3% from the outside i.e. the ‘markup’ was £2,000, but the retained earning is barely half that.
When you see a watch listed for £14,000 and you know the dealer paid £12,000, the instinct is to immediately assume they’re printing money. The dealer, staring at a spreadsheet showing an effective margin of ~8%, is thinking about how many more of these they need to sell this month just to cover rent!
We will cover more on the subject of taxes later, in the ‘crossing borders’ section.
What’s in a listing price anyway?
When you see a watch listed at £15,000 on Chrono24 or a dealer’s website, that number has to cover a lot more than you probably realise.
The first layer is the base cost, i.e. what the dealer paid for the watch. This is perhaps ‘the floor.’
The second layer is VAT, as we’ve just discussed. Under the Margin Scheme, this extracts 1/6th of whatever margin sits above the base cost.
The third layer is platform fees. If the watch is on Chrono24, the dealer is paying a monthly subscription and a commission on completed sales. The subscription alone can run to €2,200 a month for dealers listing up to 1,000 watches, which works out to €26,400 a year just for the privilege of having the ‘shop window’ open. That’s a junior employee’s salary, before a single watch has sold. On top of that, Chrono24 charges a commission of roughly ~6.5% on each completed sale. On a £15,000 watch, that’s nearly £1,000 gone.
The fourth layer is payment processing. If the buyer pays by credit card or PayPal, the dealer loses another ~3–5% depending on whether it’s domestic or international. On that £15,000 watch, a cross-border PayPal payment could cost £750.
The fifth layer is servicing and refurbishment. A basic service on a modern three-hand watch runs maybe £200–600, let’s say. A complicated watch can obviously cost a lot more. Then there’s polishing, replacing gaskets, and pressure testing which all adds up. And remember, under the Margin Scheme, none of this is deductible before VAT.
The sixth layer is their operational overheads; rent (if brick-and-mortar), insurance, shipping, photography, staff, and all the other costs of running a business.
When you stack all of this together, that ‘generous’ markup you see on screen starts to look very thin from the other side of the counter.
The platform racket
Let’s stay on the platform fees for a moment, because they’re worth digging into a bit more.