Watches from relatives estate

[a0841561]

I hope someone can offer advice to me. I have ownership of a large LED watch collection from a relative who passed away earlier this year.
The collection includes the following men's watches:
Gold HP-01 mint condition with box and manuals.
Hughes Aircraft Calculator in box.
Approx 6 Compuchron watches.
Approx 5 gold pulsar LED.
Approx 10 tokyoflash LED

I was thinking of selling on ebay. Do you have a better idea how to reach the largest possible number of potential customers and get these watches to someone who would appreciate them?

No, they are not for sale at the moment.
a0841561

[retroleds]

We're hoping you catch the LED "bug", sell a few, buy some more and are coming back here 5 years from now. Ok, ok, I was just glad to see a real person signing up today vs. the 7 spammers.
Real answer: take some pictures!! 8)

[redled]

Honestly, I think ebay is your best bet for getting the best prices. My advice though is to learn a little about what you're selling before you sell. The more knowledge you have as a seller the better you'll be able to answer questions from potential buyers, as well as present an accurate auction in the first place. The watches you describe should bring a substantial amount of money, assuming they are in working condition.

Having said that, there is nothing wrong with offering them for sale here as well. As long as you do your homework and are aware of the value, you should be able to get about the same here as you would from ebay, and the serious buyers here, who have been around a long time (look at post counts and sign-up dates) would be highly unlikely to attempt to rip you off. My experience on ebay, as both buyer and seller, has been 90%+ positive, but there is still an element of risk in selling on ebay.

[retroleds]

Honestly, I think ebay is your best bet for getting the best prices. My advice though is to learn a little about what you're selling before you sell.

I'd agree, for a one time seller, you are best off on ebay -take the best pictures possible.! For more "professional" sellers, I believe that a private site can do much better, especially if one is offering other services and some minimal warrentee. Of course, they have to be willing to wait and a private site is a bigger up-front cost/commitment.

[fronzelneekburm]

Before rushing these into ebay, please consider the following:

- At first get most info available about each watch. A nice auction that features many details and Watch history will get you usually better results than just one line like "old pulsar, not tested".

- Try out each watch, make sure it works allright and the batteries are halfways fresh. A Watch will ALWAYS get you much more money when sold as tested, working with fresh batteries then one that is described like "Dunno if it works, dont have batteries".

- Often overseen but valuable: The paperwork! If available include all aperwork, every sticker, box and screw you got for a watch. This can significantly raise the value. If you dont have the instructions you can ask fellow collectors (like here) for a copy, best would be a good scan. You can then include a printed copy of the manual as well as the scan on CD. This helps getting buyers the impression of a "big value" package and can also raise the price a little bit.

- Pictures, pictures pictures. A watch is worth double the price if you add like 20 High resolution good quality pictures. Photograph everything, the back the clasp, the face the sides. Rather take 20 pictures to have 1 good one among these. Spend MUCH time for the pictures, it will be worth the work. Try photographing the LEDs lit (which can be tricky) with seconds, date, time and so on. SO the buyer can see it works flawless and looks good. Lit display look always cool and attract undecided buyers. Who can resist a lit LED watch?

- At all costs try to offer international shipping, at least to Europe and Japan. There's many potential buyers there, for example i got to know one quite rich guy from hong Kong that gladly paid the extra shipping cost and got my sold Pulsar to a very generous bid. Without his bid i may have lost like 200$ on that auction.
For international payment it would be extremely usefull to accept paypal payments as most european users dont even know what a money order is. With bidpay closed down forever, paypal is the only easy payment option for international trading.




I'd suggest that you use this forum to get as much info about each watch as you can. Good luck with the sales!

PS: LED Watches always sell better in cold month when people dont go out a lot and have more time to care about their collections. The month before and after X-Mas always seems to draw most attention towards watches.

[a0841561]

thanks for all the help, this is a very helpful forum.

[Fitron]

You should check out www.oldpulsars.com as it's a mine of information on your pulsar models. As for the rest, just ask here and you'll probably get more information than you can cope with :D

[Planet-LED]

Go to Ebay and enter the type of watch that you have into the search bar. You can then scroll down the left side of the page in the yellow area and check the box marked "completed listings". This will let you see what similar watches have sold for in the recent past. While your watches may be in better condition than the ones that have sold, you will at least have a general idea of their value.