To Keep Or To Sell…

How do you know when it’s time to move on from a watch? Is it when you want to buy a new one? When a budget constraint forces you to prioritize other pieces or other things in life? Hopefully, you’re not in a position where you have to sell watches to make ends meet, but it happens to many, I’m sure. Perhaps you have a watch that has had too many problems or wasn’t finished quite right, and you just can’t stand to keep it anymore. Maybe you’re simply not wearing a piece as much as you used to and are reconsidering keeping it in your collection.

There are many reasons you might decide not to keep something in your collection. Most likely, you’ve simply fallen out of love with a piece. As you wear it less and less, you start to think about parting ways with the watch that’s no longer cutting it in your watch box.

If you’re like me, you wear something different on a fairly regular basis, or you try to transition from piece to piece at regular intervals. The problem is, you sometimes just lose that loving feeling for a piece, but you want to be sure before you make a big move and lose it forever. If it’s a piece that’s easy enough to replace, the bar may be lower, but you still don’t want to casually get rid of a watch that has been in the mix for a while.

One suggestion I recently heard was to put that watch in a box and set it aside, out of sight. If, after a period of time (a month or three), you find you don’t miss it, you should feel fairly confident in your decision to part ways.

Another great way to see if the watch still has a draw for you is to take some of these pieces with you on an upcoming trip. First, if you don’t even like the idea of taking the watch with you, then you’re probably safe to sell it. But if you’re willing to do what our friend, Solidcaseback, recently did and travel with a few watches, you might be able to see if the love is still there or if it’s lost for good.

We often talk about watches as items that can contain our memories in some fashion. If you wore that watch when you went on that adventure, it now has a more special nature because it absorbed those amazing memories. It becomes a go-to watch because it’s been through thick and thin and was on your wrist for that special day or that trip. It might be a marriage watch or the one you bought to commemorate your child’s birth. Often, however, we just buy them because we liked them (or thought we did) and, over time, decide that they’re not going to get much wrist time for one reason or another.

If it’s a piece that isn’t in the category of your “forever watches,” then perhaps it’s time to travel with a roll of a few and see what connection still exists. At the very least, you might get some great shots to help you sell them, or you might have new fodder for your social media posts—or both! I love taking photos of watches on trips; it’s a new setting and new inspiration for me.

For me, I try to travel with three or four watches on trips that are around a week or more. I get the angst of having them with me and I’m careful where I wear them, but it gives me the variety that I typically like. I’m someone that rotates watches daily. I can then try out pieces that aren’t getting much wear time and I can get those important photos that I so enjoy taking. I’d say the watches I am not wearing much at this point are my Bioceramic Swatch pieces. It’s probably time to see if they’ll be better off in other hands. 

Sometimes you have to follow the old adage: If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it’s yours. If not, it was never meant to be.

Thanks for reading,

Adam