How to Hunt for Watches on eBay
How to search, how to deal, and how to not lose your shirt on a vintage Mido.
This is the latest How To, which has become a signature series. Paid subscribers can read or listen to previous editions:
I’ve been using eBay since law school, when I’d scroll listings instead of listening to a professor drone on about civil procedure minutiae. I’ve bought 12 items so far this year—ranging from $4.99 to a few thousand bucks.
The numbers tell you why it’s still worth your time: eBay had 478 million visits last month. Chrono24 had 4.5 million. While Chrono24 is mostly dealers, eBay also has estate sellers, pickers, and original owners with no idea what they have.
Maybe you find eBay intimidating. The bidding, the bad photos, the design that hasn’t changed since Bear Stearns collapsed. Even in this era of $200k wall clocks, it’s still a fertile hunting ground if you know how to look.
This guide is for enthusiasts who want to hunt for vintage watches on eBay. How to search, how to deal, how to not lose your shirt taking a risk on a vintage Mido that you swear had a clean dial under that scuffed-up crystal.
I spoke with a few dealers and one watch collector who works at eBay. Their tips, plus my own checkered experience, are below.
How to Search
As with most things online, it starts with the search bar. So empty, so full of possibility. Crafting a search is a balance between broad and narrow. Something too broad like “Movado,” and you’ll scroll through a mountain of Museum watches just to find one redialed M95 chronograph. Too narrow, and you’ll miss the original-owner M95 listed simply as a “Movado Watch.”
“Sometimes I don’t use any search term at all or just search by brand,” says dealer Ryan Thomas, a prolific eBay seller known as Lucky Loupe (17k items sold!). Generally:
“The information you can read on the outside of the watch is pretty effective,” Ryan said. For example, if you search Omega Seamaster steel that’ll probably capture 90% of potential watches.
“People who are listing the best deals don’t know the specifics of what they have”—year, reference, movement, even model name. If your search is too specific, you’re missing the hidden gems.
Saved Searches
The most important feature on eBay. After any search, you’ll have a “❤️ Save This Search” option. Set up operators and filters (which we’ll go through below) before you hit save. Also, sort by Time: Newly listed, so you can check every few days and scroll in reverse chronological order.
Email alerts: By default, you’ll get daily email alerts. If there’s a truly good deal, that’s too slow, but good enough for everything else. I only have email alerts for narrow saved searches that I know get a few hits per year. Otherwise, they’re mostly annoying.
Search Sold Items: Before searching for items that are for sale, look at similar items that have actually sold. Run a search as you normally would, then look for this filter:
Sellers can price however they want, so filtering by sold items lets you see what’s actually moved in the past 90 days.
In addition to real market prices, you can also see how quickly something moves. Here, you can see an Air-King ref. 14000 is selling every day or so, showing it’s relatively liquid. Useful info whether you’re hunting on eBay or elsewhere.
Search Operators
You can put a lot more than words in the search bar. eBay uses a system of Boolean-style operators. As I write this, there are 2.58 million watch listings, and roughly 2.57 million are probably kinda crappy.1 Here are a few search terms to narrow them down.
Quote marks: Search for an exact match, e.g., "Omega Speedmaster 3510.50” will only show listings with that exact string. The most powerful, but risks missing imperfectly listed watches.
Parentheses ( , ): “Or” logic, so you can search for multiple terms at once. eBay treats the comma inside the parens as “Or”. E.g., the above returns possible variations of Rolex Air-King in a single search.
Minus Sign (
-): Before a word excludes it. E.g., I have a search for “Omega Seamaster Chronograph -terra”. I like old caliber 321 Seamasters, but don’t want to scroll through the mess of modern Aqua Terra Seamasters, so this excludes those.Asterisk (*): Wildcard, acts as a placeholder. E.g., “Vintage Chrono*” will return results for “Chronograph,” “Chronographe,” or “Chronometer”.
Asterisks or parentheses can accommodate common misspellings/typos, one of the oldest eBay tricks in the book (”Breitling” vs. “Breitlng”).
By default, searches only work on listing titles, but there’s an “include description” box under the search bar that broadens it to the item’s description.
Filters
After you run a search, you’ll get a bunch of filters on the left. Use them, but not too much.
“Often, sellers don’t even know how to use those when listing a watch,” Ryan said. When listing on eBay, you’re presented with dozens of checkboxes to describe an item’s features. Only two are required: (1) Category (watches), and (2) condition (new/pre-owned, with variations of each).
Remember that there’s a human on the other side of every listing, and usually they wanna get their item up as quickly as possible. Even if they have an automatic watch, they might not check the box for Mechanical (Automatic).
Not Specified: Every filter also has a “Not Specified” option. Checking this box is one way to make sure you’re not filtering out too much. For example, when I search for the Hamilton Khaki, I want to filter out quartz, but I don’t want to filter out the watches that might be mechanical, so I also check Not Specified:
Here are a few filters I use to varying degrees:
Movement: Unless you’re searching for a specific quartz watch, you can filter out quartz movements.
Case size: This can be a good way to filter out today’s too-big watches, though, of course, you’re relying on someone else’s ability to properly use a ruler.
Item Location: More below. I change from Default to Worldwide, but many I spoke to limit searches to North America, especially nowadays.
Year Manufactured: To skip over modern stuff, I’ll limit to older decades. For example, here’s how I set this filter for a vintage Movado search:
❤️ Let’s look at our first saved searches, a few favorites:
Below the paywall: Saved searches to get you started on your hunt, plus how to “read” a listing, seller profiles, and what not to buy on eBay.
