With the what seems to be an increase in the current demand for watch appraisals and sales avenue advice it crossed my mind that we could make this work in a beneficial way so that all benefit.
What if we were ( by we I mean Ash & Co) were to set up a seperate part of the forum dedicated to such requests but with a twist. To start a thread in such section the OP must contribute a fee which can be then transferred to a charity or something deemed worthy of the mods. Win for all, the OP gets his responses, the people who respond cannot complain because they knew what they were getting into when they opened the post and hopefully a third party benefits in a positive way

Just a thought

Edit, or maybe I am just Barking Mad

 

Good thinking.

Here's my go at it.

Maybe a $5.00 subscription with a limit of ten/twenty posts for "inquiring minds".
Once you reach the limit, and if still interested in Omegas or watches in general, you can upgrade to the perfectly reasonable tier 1, or just put up with the ads.

There are flaws in my cunning plan, but I'm sure they can be worked out.

 

Very understandable. On the other hand, there will be trusted and safe demand for an Omega only Auction section on the OF. eBay charges 13% plus all sorts of mini fees for their platform. Charge 7% and let the parties deal with each other. Some experienced members could initially check the validation of the offered watches. Could be a setup like a private club with a yearly fee to use it. Profits could be distributed to the Members, who paid the entry fees. That would circumvent the profit/tax questions, I guess ? Having all sorts of Specialists here, they could take care of legal/ corporate problems and setups here. I'd be happy, to commit to it.

 

How about simply answer the goddamn questions as the "appraisals" for legitimacy contribute to the shared knowledge on this site. Like I said in a previous thread, no one is pointing a gun at your heads so one can simply ignore threads they don't like.

 

I'm sort of An old hat tech nerd, experienced running forums of various types. Let me know if I can be of assistance.

 

Although I'm a new member here, I would gladly pay a reasonable fee to sell through here, but having members/mods verify authenticity sniffs of liability all over the place

Just my $0.02...

 

I don't think anyone was really suggesting true authentication, which could not be done virtually. However, there is something of a movement towards crowd-sourced validation by allowing the addition of public comments. LoupeThis allows this from registered members, although people rarely comment on listings in practice.

Even some scientific publications (e.g. eLife) are moving away from traditional pre-publication accept/decline peer-review (analogous to authentication) to a model that permits rapid publication in conjunction with transparent public assessment through comments by experts. This is still pretty experimental and I don't know whether I'm comfortable with it, or if it will be successful.

 

Do you do windows?

 

Windows, Mac, unix sure I do them all.

 

Goddamnit here I was making a funny and you made it even more funny-like.