Authorized Dealer Route
Time and Money and Relationships
Pros - you pay retail price for the watch you want, not a market price which can be higher. Roughly only 1-2 percent of all watches go over retail, is this the watch you want?
You get invited to fancy events at the store and or dinner with the Brands you love if you do get big enough, invites to the US Open, Concert Tickets and other events are all possible and the Dealer provided Swag.
Cons - you need to be on a waitlist and waitlists can be loooong. This is the “game” at authorized dealers, will you be one of the people privileged enough to get allocated your dream watch while competing with 200 other guys for the same watch. That AD may only get 1 or 2 of that model for the whole year! Also, you may need to buy multiple watches over a period of time to establish a relationship with them. You need to keep the watches you buy, and if you sell them before you get your next piece, you could be caught and your entire relationship gets thrown out before you even get the watch you want. How many times are you going to walk into your AD and ask them about that Daytona? How many months or years will you wait? Will you ever get the “call”, will the watch get discontinued in that timeframe, or maybe the retail price goes up?
It becomes a job and you better remember your sales person's birthday and dog's name. If your sales associate leaves, you need to start from scratch, if you get caught selling the watch you will be black balled, and if the watch gets discontinued, you think you get moved to the next version? Unfortunately not. You are and will be just one of 1000 people asking for the watch, hopefully you have what it takes to differentiate yourself from the masses, usually that differentiation comes in spend in categories that are not watches.... need 50k earrings for your wife?
Sourcing your luxury watch from the Grey Market
Pro - No games to play, you buy the watch that you want, when you want it, no wait lists, no “to buy this you need to buy these things you don’t want in order to get the opportunity, in the future, to buy what you actually want”. No jewelry added on for you and your significant other. With 98% of watches, they are actually cheaper on the Grey Market and these watches can be new or used.
Hear objective opinions and have discussions on value with YOUR goals and collecting needs in mind, not what the AD wants to shove down your throat. You only want one Rolex in your collection and you only want it to be a Daytona? It is hard to justify the time and the spend if you only want 1 watch from the range.
Con – Oftentimes the 2% of watches that are coveted carry a higher price than retail, sometimes 2, 3, 4x the retail price.
Depending on the type of buyer you are, there are many different paths to get the watches you truly want. At 1MT, we want to help you cultivate the relationships you currently have and balance the approach from ADs and the Grey Market. We work to understand your positions with each brand so we can help you rationalize and bring perspective to your watch collecting journey.
To put things in perspective, at a local Rolex AD, they get over 100,000 client requests for watches a year with only 1,000 watches to sell. Will you be one of the lucky 1,000 clients or do you want to take matters into your own hands and get that watch? This is why many people turn to the Grey Market, to get what they want when they want it verse playing the game. While the prices might be more expensive on the Grey Market for the inital cost of the watch, the journey is often much cheaper and many times less frustrated, in many cases most clients at the AD are waiting for the hailmary that never comes. Why take that risk on your dreams?
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