The market for vintage and pre-owned watches is high, but you will need to be very careful about what you are about to buy and the person whom you are working for. At www.watchshopping.com you will get a variety of them and here are some of the things which you will need to consider before you purchase.
If you check online, you will find out that, there are a growing number of people who are looking out for watches all over the world. Due to the various factors, everyone seems to be out to launch their own micro brand. What this means is that mechanical watches tend to give the other brands a run for their money in terms of pre-owned and vintage watches.
In case you are among those who have been bitten by watch bug, you will need to consider selling, buying, and swapping watches. This will mean that you will have to dig in the pre-owned and vintage market which is thriving more every other day.
What is vintage and what is a pre-owned watch?
Everyone might have their own definition, but the second-hand market tends to roughly cover from quartz going up. When it comes to vintage, it is anything that came before that. In most instances the 80s is the cutoff point between the two periods.
Fans for watches are normally very picky and thus, they expect to get watches, especially the luxury, and high-end ones, with original documents and boxes if they are pre-owned. Anything that doesn’t have that, is bogus to them. Meaning, the watch value will be influenced by this.
In case you want to sell a recent, important watch without documents, then its value will be less as compared to what it should really be. In vintage, such could be negligible. If you are lucky to get a vintage watch that has original documents and box, it will represent instead of being a big plus.
On wristbands, you might get the original one together with the watch. But the important part here is not the band which in most cases might be unserviceable and old, but its buckle. In quality watches, buckles. A buckle on a good quality watch is normally branded. When purchasing an old watch, you will need to ask the seller if they have the original buckle and wristband.
Depreciation and the way to reduce its effect
You shouldn’t purchase watches as an investment, especially if you are not sure of what you are doing. There are watches which tend to exceptionally hold their value well with some having the potential of being resold easily as premium. A watch which is new will tend to depreciate by the value of sales tax once you are out with it from the shop.
Depending on the model, brand, make, materials, and conditions, its values can slowly decrease or plummet to the point when the various reasons, between which scarcity makes it be expensive, the value then stabilizes and then begins climbing up again.
In case the watch is a limited edition from a well-known brand that is reputable and is held in high esteem, you are assured of its value increasing over time.
Dials, reprinted or original?
When you are dealing with old watches, you will need to consider some critical issues concerning their aspect. And one of the most important ones which are visible is their dials’ state especially since some dials don’t age out so well. When they were originally created, watches used to have porcelain, metal, or enameled dials and the coverings and techniques which were used on them were quite different and many from one another.
In certain scenarios, they proved not to be durable enough with time, and this brought about the lovely original watches which were broken, dirty and scratched; dials which cannot be amended or cleaned in any way.
In the past years, it was a good idea to just throw away the old dials and reprint them using modern technologies, at times using layouts which were creative which didn’t seem to respect all the philology of the original watch. This is something which could make any lover of vintage watches clink.
But instead of getting a watch that was original with unreadable and faded dial, it could be better to get one that has a good reprint, which is made by someone who tends to respect the original watch design, so that they are made enjoyable and wearable again.
You can as well turn to the web as there are a number of dials which are waiting to be able to be inserted in the correct watch. All you need to have is a little patience and luck in being able to find them.