The Breitling Watch Source Forums

Apart from eBay, watchfinder and on here where is the best place to sell a Breitling? Preferably little or no cost to the sale, on a completely private basis. I'm based in the South of England.

Thanks,

Callum

Well if you don't want to pay then the forums seem an obvious place - WUS, TZ, TZ-UK, etc or a brand specific forum depending on the watch - TRF, Paneristi, etc

TZ-UK will be hard for a new joiner to sell on as the sales corner has restrictions on it. 50 posts plus being a member for 2 months before you can see SC. 250 posts plus being a member for 6 months before you can create a new post.

watches.co.uk

Chrono24 seems big, lots of dealers but plenty of private sellers also. I looked on there a lot prior to buying my latest (ended up finding one through eBay) but haven't sold on there so not sure on fees etc. Good luck!

Loot or local trading papers.

Although in todays world most buyers look straight to ebay now for everything.

IMO it depends on credentials, as others have noted. The local culture of some forums tend to show favoritism to those with established credentials, for obvious reasons given you are talking about a large sum exchanging hands. If you have some sort of portfolio, than that will help. If not, it will be hard to find a seller willing to send a few grand to someone they do not know. One great solution to this is Escrow...it costs a bit but, especially if it is a more expensive model, it protects not only the buyer but the seller as well. If you use PayPal, I would only sell to an established buyer because a buyer can make a PayPal transaction a huge financial loss to the seller for no fault of their own.

How and who does Escrow solutions?

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To my understanding there are quite a few organizations that provide it (and some are great where as others suck). I've always just used escrow.com as I hate PayPal alone given it is easy for a seller to lose everything (I've been hit by and lost to two good scammers over about 1,500 transactions, one international and one not). They have been eBay's 'preferred' escrow service...so they could even be a subsidy of eBay in the fashion PayPal is. The services aren't ridiculously priced but they aren't cheap either. I've heard good things on forums about transpact.

The way it works
https://www.escrow.com/solutions/escrow/process4.asp
is a bit of a pain as turnaround is always slower than instant electronic access through PayPal only, but it goes a few steps beyond PayPal's 'seller protection' in that it prevents buyer fraud such as if they ship you back a bum product (i.e.: return a fake Breitling in place of your real one) or empty box. With that said, there is still escrow fraud and people still have issues with it, but it's one more way of discouraging fraud and detecting it before it causes financial loss. Some escrow sites also play middleman with the physical merchandise but to my understanding are more expensive...I believe there are jewelry-specific ones which can even inspect the physical product but I havent looked into it as I've just always swapped credentials with sellers and buyers and won't sell to people who can't establish a track record. If I'm not comfortable enough with the seller or buyer to send them or have them send me a personal check or a USPS Money Order, I generally don't do business as that means something in the back of my mind has me hesitating.