Top 12 TIPS when buying a watch
1 BUY THE SELLER
If you don’t trust them or what they say, walk away
2 FACETS IN ORDER OF IMPORTANCE
Dial, case and case numbers, movement, original papers, other. ALL the money is in the dial or ‘face’ of the watch. There are a huge number of variants. Know which dial goes with which serial number range and learn the various font anomalies. Rolex produced six Red Submariner dials and a seventh service ‘luminova’ dial for that one reference alone.
3 CHECK THE SERIAL NUMBER
With the watch register www.thewatchregister.com or the art loss register www.artloss.com
4 A DAMAGED DIAL IS IMPOSSIBLE TO REPAIR
Without massive loss to your timepiece’s value.
5 CAN YOU TAKE IT BACK?
Does it have a warranty and is there someone reliable to take it back to, in order to mend it or obtain a refund? The watch business is full of prospectors cashing in on this newly realised asset class. Make sure yours is trustworthy and has a proper after sales policy.
6 COLLECT WHAT YOU LIKE
Don’t buy something because someone else told you they were THE thing to have. If you like it and you have done your research, chances are someone else will too, if you have to sell it.
7 DON’T GET TOO OBSESSED WITH
Hands, crowns, glasses and bezels. These can all be sourced on the secondary market as can many of the other even more important parts of each watch.
8 LEARN, LEARN AND LEARN SOME MORE. IF YOU AREN’T SURE ABOUT IT, WALK AWAY
There are plenty of other fish in the sea. The one you are after isn’t unique, there are others out there. Make yourself as knowledgeable as possible, you will never know everything. You can for instance learn about the lume at www.rolexpassionreport.com and about the various submariner models on www.drsd.com
9 HAS THE CASE BEEN POLISHED?
Most watch cases, even if they have never been polished, will have an aged patina to them. If your watch has no marks on it anywhere and is over 25 years old, chances are it has been polished or laser filled and restored. More and more, collectors want original, unpolished cases, particularly on sports watches. The lugs and crown guards will be thinner than other pieces should they have been polished where owners have damaged them.
Laser-filling a case allows for a dent to be filled and then smoothed over. This CRUCIALLY allows for the case not to be made thinner by having to polish down to the lower depth of the dent.
10 CHECK GENERIC SITES FOR OTHER EXAMPLES BEFORE BUYING
ON www.Chrono24.com you should find at least five of the same watch out there, with exactly the same date, dial configuration and model. If yours has a dial on it with a serial number ten years later, you may have a problem. You can find Rolex serial numbers here.
11 FORUMS AREN’T ‘WATCH BIBLES’
Don’t trust everything you read on a forum. There are large numbers of people in auction houses, forums and other areas who have very little knowledge and yet feel they are in a position to pass advice and judgement onto others.
12 BEWARE WHEN SERVICING YOUR WATCH WITH ROLEX
1. Rolex do not generally service older watches (more than 30 years old) which seems incredible given how many customers they are inviting to follow their brand and then leave without any support.
2. They WILL offer to replace old and often VERY VALUABLE parts for new ones which may not match yours, in order to satisfy themselves they are handing back a perfect watch. They are often handing back a much less valuable one.
In November 2019, a client was offered a dial and bezel replacement for a 16520 four-line Daytona at the following prices. The dial and bezel were from 1989, near perfect, extremely rare and the dial was (unusually) spotless. The black dials do often suffer on this model.
Dial replacement : £760.00
Dial marked.
Specks on Dial.
Bezel replacement: £410.00
Bezel is marked/knocked.
The dial and bezel were worth £30,000.
The new ‘service replacement’ ones £2,500.