Is anybody willing to share their ebay or google queries? I haven't come up with one comprehensive enough to save, but I believe it can be done. Mostly I'm not experienced enough to know which brands to include in a search.

I generally start off with something like
(watch, "watch bracelet") (universal, omega, iwc, zenith, valjous) vintage -diamonds -"gold filled" -"inherited from my uncle"

I know my list of brands is wholly inadequate, that's one thing I need help with.

 

Having "vintage" in there can be useful in weeding out a lot of watches you're not interested in BUT you could also be missing some great watches that don't include it in the title.
I'd set up one search as BIN (buy it now) and sorted by newly listed first and another as auction only sorted by time ending soonest.

Brands are obviously going to be down to your preference. I have a long list of brands, models and ref numbers. There'll always be plenty of "-diesel" options you could put in but I've found that these are ever changing and take up too much of your search space.
Currently I have had to add -handmade to my Speedmaster search (including within description) otherwise I'm overrun with strap listings.

Another thing to tick is the "worldwide" box though you may have to set strategies in place for sellers that won't ship direct to you. Eg friends, relatives or foreign mail boxes. Though sometimes a simple message to the seller early in the auction can lead to agreed overseas shipping despite it not being an option in the original listing.

Hope something in there helps

Ian

 

Thanks for the advice. It makes good sense. With regard to brands, it's not so much which I like (all of them) as how zealous the collectors of that brand can be. I'm not very competitive.