Selling a luxury watch is a great way to bring more money into your bank account, and one of the best markets to sell a luxury watch is eBay. With millions of users every day, eBay is a brilliant and effective platform to sell a luxury watch. However, going through the whole process of selling a luxury watch on eBay can be a little confusing and tedious, which is why I have made this helpful guide just for you.
Whether you are running out of time or are more of a visual person, here’s a nice infographic that I put together basically summarizing the post just for you!
My friend, in this post, I am going to give you a step-by-step guide to help you sell a luxury watch on eBay. No matter what you are selling the watch for, I will provide you an in-depth guide, and you can follow along with these steps if you want to. I implore you to NOT skip any steps and to follow each step closely so you can have success selling a luxury watch.
1. Set Up An eBay Account
The first step you need to take for selling a luxury watch on eBay is to set up an eBay account. Setting up an eBay account is fairly straightforward. If you do not have an account with eBay yet, you can use an email, a Google account, a FaceBook account, or an Apple account to create an account on eBay. And if you already have an eBay account, all you need to do is sign in to complete this step.
If you are just creating an account for eBay, I would recommend creating a strong password mixed with characters and numbers. One of the worst things that can happen is a hacker getting into your eBay profile and messing with your account, so going out of your way to pick a really strong password is crucial.
You may be wondering, “Why do you need an eBay account to sell a luxury watch anyway?” The reason why you need one is so you can list the watch for sale under an eBay account, and so eBay can pay you if the luxury watch sells.
Once you have signed in to your eBay account or have created an account, you have completed this first step. After you sign in, you should be looking at the eBay home page. From here, click “sell” on the top right-hand side of the menu, and then click “list an item” (should be a big blue button after you click “sell”).
2. Tell eBay What Watch You’re Selling
After you click the big “list an item” button, you should be redirected to a screen with a search bar. This is where you will tell eBay what make and model your luxury watch is. In the search bar, type in the brand name of your luxury watch and what model it is. For example, I have a Breitling Wings watch, so if I were to sell it I would type in the search bar “Breitling Wings Watch”.
Once you start typing the make and model of your luxury watch, the eBay search bar should make auto-suggestions from other sales made in the past. If the exact make and model name is suggested, click it. But if the exact model name is not suggested, I recommend just typing the name of the watch brand you have.
After you tell eBay what model or make your luxury watch is, they will redirect you to an “add more details to find a match” page. On this page, you can add more details describing your watch like what gender the watch is for, what style the watch is, the watch colors, and more. Fill out this page to the best of your ability, and it’s completely fine to leave some of the categories blank.
Once you are done filling out the details of your watch, click the “view possible matches” button. It will show you watch models that have sold in the past that match the description of the watch you gave eBay. If you find a watch that matches the look and brand of your watch, click it. If it doesn’t show the exact model you are looking for, you can hit the “continue without selection” button.
3. Choose The Condition Of Your Watch
After you tell eBay what you’re selling, the next step is to choose what condition your watch is in. After the second step, you will be redirected to a screen to choose the condition of your watch.
eBay gives you options from “brand new with tags” all the way down to “pre-owned”, and you have to choose the one that accurately represents the current condition of your watch. This is a step that is often overlooked and undervalued but plays a massive role in selling a luxury watch on eBay.
With this step, you really have to be honest with eBay. If you list a luxury watch as “brand new”, but in reality, you wore it out and it’s actually pre-owned, then the person buying the watch from you is not going to be pleased, and you could get in a lot of trouble for it. If you do this, you tell eBay that you are untrustworthy, which can be a massive headache you don’t want to deal with.
If you are unsure what condition your luxury watch is in, I would recommend contacting a watch specialist to determine the condition of the luxury watch so you can accurately choose the appropriate option from this page. And after you’re done choosing the luxury watch condition, you can hit the “next” button and go on to edit your listing page.
4. Take High Quality Pictures
Taking high-quality pictures of your luxury watch is one of the most important steps in selling your luxury watch on eBay, and it can absolutely be the make-or-break step that influences the sale of your luxury watch. The people looking to buy your watch need to visualize and examine exactly what they’re paying for. If the pictures you take of your luxury watch are low quality, buyers will be less confident in purchasing.
On the page where you are creating the listing for your luxury watch, eBay asks you to take multiple pictures of your watch from nine different angles, with a maximum of 12 total pictures for your listing. With this step, the more quality pictures you take, the better. All you need to do for this step is take high-quality pictures of your luxury watch from the angles eBay asks you to take them from.
For this step, I would recommend using a high-quality photography camera. A really good photography camera can really capture all of the details of your luxury watch, which can make the buyer more confident in purchasing.
Another way to take high-quality pictures is to use a new smartphone camera. The cameras on most modern-day smartphones are just getting better and better, and you can take really good images of your luxury watch for a higher chance of selling it.
5. Determine Your Pricing And Shipping
The fifth step is to determine how much you are going to sell your luxury watch for and the shipping service you plan to use. For pricing, eBay will autofill a “starting bid” price and a “purchase now” price based on sales made in the past with the same watch model or brand you provided to them.
You can decide to go with eBay’s pricing and there is nothing wrong with that, but I would also recommend getting your luxury watch appraised. If you know exactly how much your luxury watch is worth, you know how much the watch should be selling for, which can give you the right numbers to price your luxury watch correctly.
For shipping, you can select between four different shipping services: FedEx, USPS, UPS, and Freight, and you can choose between economy, standard, or expedited shipping. Don’t let this overwhelm you: I would personally just choose one of the economy or standard shipping options because it is the more affordable option compared to expedited.
Lastly, you get to choose whether you pay for shipping or if the buyer pays a flat rate for shipping. Either way, no matter which one you choose, you will have to pay some kind of fee. Even if you let the buyer pay for shipping, their shipping payment is accounted for in the final value fee you have to pay, which I will talk about in step 7.
6. Preview Your Listing
Previewing your eBay listing is important so you can double-check all the information about the luxury watch you put in is correct. At the bottom of the page when you are creating your listing, there should be a button named “preview” right next to “List”. Click on it and it should preview what you’re listing will look like to potential buyers.
When previewing your listing, please make sure to double-check that all of your pictures look good, all of the watch detail information is correct, and the selling price or starting bid is accurate. Going out of your way and previewing your listing can save you.
It would be a headache finding a mistake in your listing and having to take down the listing and creating a new one would be irritating. Taking the time to go through your listing thoughtfully is an essential step.
7. Be Aware Of eBay Selling Fees
eBay has two types of selling fees when you list and sell an item on eBay: an insertion fee and a final value fee. An insertion fee is a fee for when you list an item on eBay, and a final value fee is the percentage cut from the final sold price (including how much the buyer has to pay for the watch and shipping fees) that eBay takes. Insertion fees and final value fees differ from category to category.
For luxury watches, you get 200 listings every single month for free, and if you go past that in a month, it’s a 35 cent insertion fee charge. Most people aren’t listing over 200 luxury watches a month so this is hardly a fee you need to worry about. However, the final value fee is a substantial 12.85% for luxury watches as of right now.
That means if someone buys your luxury watch on eBay for 2,000 dollars for the watch itself plus shipping charges, then eBay will take 257 dollars of the 2,000 dollars as their cut, leaving you with 1,743 dollars in your pocket.
Also, it is important to note that luxury watches selling for 2,000 dollars and over will be inspected for authentication. eBay has implemented this recently so that buyers spending thousands of dollars are getting the best bang for their buck.
It is always a great idea to get your luxury watch authenticated just to be sure that you are selling a genuine watch at its real price. Your luxury watch buyer does not want to waste their time or money, so always keep their happiness and satisfaction in mind.
8. Be Patient and Wait For Someone To Buy
Being patient can be one of the hardest steps in this process. I know how eagerly you want to sell the luxury watch, but it does take some time for others to see your listing and be encouraged to buy the luxury watch you’re selling. If you followed the steps before this one, you already got the hard part out of the way and all you have to do is wait and be patient until someone is inevitably interested in buying.
On the listing page itself, you can see how many “watchers”, who are people that frequently visit your listing, are viewing your luxury watch. The higher the watchers you have, the more likely your watch will sell soon!
9. Get Paid For Selling Your Luxury Watch!
When someone does buy your luxury watch, you have to be the one that packages it and brings it to the delivery service. For example, if you chose the shipping option for UPS and someone buys your luxury watch, you would need to package it and bring it to the nearest UPS store for them to ship it to your buyer.
And as for the shipping label, you can print one out for free through “My eBay”. In “My eBay”, you can print out a shipping label with the buyer’s address and tape it on the packaging box. Once you send off the luxury watch with the correct shipping label, you are all set and done.
Great job! You have followed all of the steps to properly list your luxury watch on eBay! Once someone purchases your luxury watch or puts a bid on it, you will get a notification from eBay, and once all of the payment goes through, you finally get paid!
Once you follow all of the nine steps above, I am confident that you will be able to sell your luxury watch on eBay. All of the hard work you put in listing your watch and researching just shows how committed you are to do this correctly, and your luxury watch will inevitably sell.