You CAN afford to buy a vintage watch at auction

We’ll make an assumption here and say “yes” (and we do appreciate that budgets wildly vary).

Christie’s, Philips, Sotheby’s, Antiquorum, Heritage… All the largest and most well-known houses have, virtually without exception, watches in their auctions with low estimates starting around $2,000 USD, and some without reserve (which means that the watch will sell, regardless of dollar amount, to the high bidder).

A great example of the range of prices at auction is a stainless steel Patek Phillipe 1518 that sold for over $11M USD at Phillips: The Geneva Watch Auction Four in November 2016, setting a new world record for a wristwatch.

The low estimate of the next lot? $2,000 USD.