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watch industry seems slower than it's ever been

  1. pIoNeErOfThEnILe Aug 2, 2019

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    new and pre-owned

    seems worse than last year at this time and it was slow then as well.

    lots of choices, plenty of availability. and like most things, if you're not priced right pre-owned it's going to sit forever.
     
  2. JwRosenthal Aug 2, 2019

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    Sounds good to me!!
     
  3. kov Trüffelschwein. Aug 2, 2019

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    Depends on what you’re looking for. I am in the market for a good 2998, for months now :whistling:
     
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  4. JwRosenthal Aug 2, 2019

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    I think this was discussed in another thread- about the summer slump, and that the top end pieces continue to rise and trading is brisk but the lower end pieces are sitting- the divide between upper and lower class in the watch world.

    That said, we have 4 houses on my block for sale they have been sitting for months- 3 of them vacant as the sellers already moved out- and this is one of the best neighborhoods in the city. A brisk economy I am not seeing on the ground, only on paper.
     
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  5. joeshoup Aug 2, 2019

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    I've noticed this bifurcation too. Sellers are struggling to move a $2k Tudor but that secondhand GMT will fly out the door at $5k over retail. It's like the economy is accelerating that last little bit to the hilltop. Don't think we're looking down the other side just yet but we might be soon. Here in the SF Bay Area where I live there's still people spending crazy money on bad houses... But they're taking a month to sell instead of a day.
     
  6. pIoNeErOfThEnILe Aug 3, 2019

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    overall there's just too much artificial inflation on too many watches that were once secondary better price options.

    seems like they're all bumped up in price now, in addition to finding that buyer that was once once easy as well

    it's a lot harder to make money on watches now, even if you know your niche
     
    Edited Aug 3, 2019
  7. jaguar11 Aug 3, 2019

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    Personally I have never tried making money on a watch....
     
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  8. pIoNeErOfThEnILe Aug 3, 2019

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    my journey never started like that. it just evolved into it to pursue it more.

    i had to buy watches at a certain price point that i liked. i did this so that if i didn't like it anymore i could profit off of it, to buy more or other watches...simple economics so that i didn't have to keep collecting and writing checks. if i dodn't sell i couldn't buy more or more expensive pieces

    very rarely did i ever just buy a watch to sell it afterward. it use to be pretty easy if you knew what you were doing, but now many watches are priced out of the range for it. or the margin is just too slim.

    sure you can still find some bargains if you look deep enough for them, but they're not plentiful. there's just too many overpriced b type brands, with sellers not budging from their prices.

    were really at an overpriced market saturation
     
    Edited Aug 3, 2019
  9. JwRosenthal Aug 3, 2019

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    Just when the skeptics like me start thinking it can’t go any higher and it’s all gonna come tumbling down-it spikes and keeps going. When my 16750 hit the $5k mark, I couldn’t believe it would go any higher- that would just be crazy....I hadn’t even begun to see crazy.
     
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  10. S.H. Aug 3, 2019

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    You just have to be careful with pricing... sub or around 1k watches (vintage, pretty, and serviced thus usable) sell rather well if you are trusted as a seller. Hot items vintage or not sell well even at high price... by definition. All the rest is hard to move ... also by definition; a second hand modern watch is probably worth its real production cost for most (i. e. not much). And I regularly see what I consider vintage pieces of trash selling for good money, even here, so this is not a slow market imho. Big unsold inventory (modern) and millions of items on the market (vintage), and we still manage to spend lots in watches...
     
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  11. astrand Aug 3, 2019

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    I'm surprised how much prices have inflated just in the last 3 years. I've spend much time hunting 1986 speedies and the prices between 2016 and 2019 are quite staggering.

    I wonder what has caused this sudden spike
     
  12. STANDY schizophrenic pizza orderer and watch collector Aug 3, 2019

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    The more people that get into a swimming poll the harder it is to swim ;)


    The last 10 years has seen this world grow the two posters linked in this post are 37000th members
    I joined in 2013 and am about the 2500th member
    We’re at 50000+ members now
     
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  13. astrand Aug 3, 2019

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    It was a bad night of sleep that kept me up watching YouTube - eventually leading me to some Skx007 video from the urban gentry channel... I had never cared much about watches before then.. Especially anything over 200$.

    I bought my seiko skx and eventually fell in love with omega. I wonder if these watch channels / Instagram has caused the influx in hobbyists.
     
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  14. JwRosenthal Aug 3, 2019

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    Just like the planet-too many people.
     
  15. JwRosenthal Aug 3, 2019

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    No doubt that social media has had an influence- more people keen to an interest, the more competition.
     
  16. STANDY schizophrenic pizza orderer and watch collector Aug 3, 2019

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    What, we only inhabit about 12% of the actual planet.

    Urbanization: 95% Of The World's Population Lives On 10% Of The Land

     
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  17. JwRosenthal Aug 3, 2019

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    Grabbed this from the web with first query on “habitable land on the planet”

    Since about 30 % of Earth’s surface is land, this means that the total area of land is 0.3 * 515 ≈ 155 million square km, about half of which is habitable for humans. With roughly 7 billion people alive today, we can conclude that there is 0.011 square km habitable land available per person.

    And here’s another nugget

    During the 20th century, the global population saw its greatest increase in known history, rising from about 1.6 billion in 1900 to over 6 billion in 2000.
     
  18. JwRosenthal Aug 3, 2019

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    I’m not going to research sources or fact check the above which is what I would do if I were having a real debate on the issue- but like watches (back to the thread), there is far more competition for resources than there has been historically.
     
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  19. Archer Omega Qualified Watchmaker Aug 3, 2019

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    However we are using resources at a rate that is unsustainable. Having "room" for the people is only one part of the equation...
     
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  20. STANDY schizophrenic pizza orderer and watch collector Aug 3, 2019

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    I was going to mention consumerism ;)
     
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