Selling a watch: what box and papers are worth

The reference sets the market, not the brand

A watchmaker does not start with the brand but with the reference: the number that pins down exactly which version you are holding. Two watches that look identical from a metre away can house entirely different movements, and therefore command entirely different prices.

Panerai is the clearest example. Every version gets a PAM number, engraved on the case back and listed on the warranty card. Behind two near-identical Luminors you may find a hand-wound Unitas one time and the in-house P.9010 calibre the next. Without that number an offer is an estimate; with it, an offer is a calculation.

There are usually two further numbers inside the case: the case number and the movement number. Serious brands document both. If they match what the papers say, a large part of the authenticity question is answered in one go.

What the folder ought to contain

What the trade means by "papers" is more than the warranty card alone:

• Warranty card – with reference and serial number, dated and stamped
• Purchase receipt – proof of where and when the watch was bought
• Service history – invoices for overhauls, with dates and work carried out
• Box and accessories – spare links, straps, tools, the booklet

A recent service record does more than you might think. With brands that build purely mechanical movements an overhaul is expensive, and a buyer who does not know when the movement was last opened will budget for the worst case. An invoice from last year removes that uncertainty. In the top segment we see the gap between a complete set and a bare watch run to ten or twenty per cent of the offer.

A gold case comes with a floor

If the case is gold there is always a lower limit: the material value. 750 means 18 carat, 585 means 14 carat. On 14 August gold stood at 120.99 euros per gram, which works out at 90.74 euros per gram of case weight at 18 carat and 70.78 euros at 14 carat.

That figure is the floor an offer never drops below, and no more than that. With a sought-after brand or reference the trade value sits far above it, and then the case scarcely matters. We work out both figures so that you can see where the offer comes from instead of having to guess.

About the watch market itself there is no figure here, and that is deliberate. We measure the rates of gold, silver, platinum and palladium every day; of watch references we measure nothing. What we do not measure, we do not write down — not even when it would sound good.