The London (Vintage) Watch Fair 25 January 2026 9am - 1.30pm

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Well, I went.
I have free travel so all I had to pay was the £20 entrance fee.
I shan’t go again. Some nice watches but way over the prices many of us are used to paying.
I thought the prices were unrealistic/optimistic, in relation to the few enquiries I made.
An unexceptional 166.041 was offered to me for £750.
I think I should get out more.
 
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I see this and the Birmingham one come by regularly on Instagram. I went once to the Birmingham event and was also very disappointed. Lack of vintage quality and some real overpriced junk being offered by know-it-all dealers.
 
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I’ve been close to going to a couple of UK watch fairs several times but with two young kids, my free time is rationed and I always came back to thinking they would be high on price and low on quality.

There used to be a couple of decent watches at Newark antiques fair but not enough to make it worth the trip just for watches. You might do several fairs without anything, then find two decent watches on the fourth visit.

I haven’t found any fairs/markets etc in the UK that are worthwhile for watches.
 
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I gave up on these watch fairs a few years ago some nice stock sometimes but always very optomistic prices
 
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I see this and the Birmingham one come by regularly on Instagram. I went once to the Birmingham event and was also very disappointed. Lack of vintage quality and some real overpriced junk being offered by know-it-all dealers.
Excuse me Sir, but I think you mean a curated collection of extremely rare and highly collectible high horology time pieces offererd by specialist horology afficinados. 😉
 
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The Instagram posts for Birmingham come over as though it's a really big event, but I was seriously pretty much done after 20 minutes. I spent another hour mooching about as I'd flown over to the UK especially for it. My overall impression of the vintage was low quality, non-rarity and everything being over priced for what it was.

I go to other watch fairs internationally and this I have to say was the worst. For instance in September @Aludic and I went to Lille for their yearly watch fair and the quality there was pretty high and a lot of reasonable pricing, we needed a couple of good hours to check everything out.......They also really know how to do snacks....the baguette jambon and the tarte au citroen for lunch were truly memorable!
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