Why Watch Investing is More Powerful than Watch Trading

Last year, I made $3,000 average profit per watch trade.  Which I thought was pretty good.  That was before I tried something new.  Something I thought quite frankly was too good to be true.  That was until 2 days later when $62,000 hit my bank account.  I had made $12,000 profit on one watch simply by answering a text!

But how was that possible?

This was the profit I made on the first watch deal I did switching my strategy up from being a trader to an investor.  Now $12,000 in a week may sound insane to some.  To others, this is not hard to comprehend, and they make more than that weekly.  So I’ll provide context here to give relevance to why this was so amazing, and why this is not abnormal for watch investing.

There are countless ways to make millions of dollars in this day and age.  When talking with people of all backgrounds and financial situations, I always want to learn more about HOW they make their money, not just the actual amount they take home.  The reason the “how” is so important, is because anyone who’s worked a high-stress job they’ve hated and ground it out will tell you there’s a cost associated with the time and toll it takes on the soul.  Those that make the same amount of money spending their days doing as they please, with family, or traveling, or golfing, etc. will paint a much different picture.  How you make money can transform your entire life for the better if you learn to make money work for you instead of working for money.

Watch investing is hands down one of the best ways to make your money work for you.  It produces exceptional returns with little work involved if executed effectively.  Unbiasedly, after having invested in real estate, cryptocurrency, stocks, and other alternative assets, I still stand behind timepiece investing as my favorite financial vehicle for income.  It makes the “how” I’m making money so much simpler and fun.

Now it’s important to clarify that watch investing is different from watch trading.  Many people think they have to become full-time watch dealers for it to yield enough income to be worth their time.  That’s simply not true.

When trading watches, you learn the ins and outs of how to buy low and sell high.  It’s simple, but you have to get good at sourcing deals, negotiating, and listing online to resell to retail customers.  This can be profitable and time-consuming.  A successful full-time trader usually makes $80K-$250K a year and they have to move quite a bit of volume to get those numbers.

To add context, when I was only trading watches, my average profit margins were about 18%. I was selling 10-20 watches a month, and taking home around $12K on a slow month and $30K on a good month.  The time spent doing this was about 35 hours a week.  This is still phenomenal compared to people used to working full-time jobs they don’t like being at.  Especially because the hours I was working could be done remotely from anywhere and my schedule was my own to set.  So I would be doing watch deals while traveling, or over some drinks with friends for example.  So the time was on my terms, and I was loving every bit of it. This was still 35 hours a week though.

As I switched over to becoming more of a timepiece investor after learning wealth transfer strategies in the Trader to Investor course of Watch Trading Academy, I started moving more of my capital into pieces that I could just sit on and enjoy while the market appreciated over time.

The shift from a hustler-like trading mentality to an investment mentality was a game-changer for me.  I’ve also seen it change many other people’s lives.  The timepieces I was buying didn’t really need to be negotiated as the market price was as-is.  So as long as I’m sourcing pieces that continue to appreciate, I’m in the money from the first month onward.  This insider knowledge of where the market was going, and what pieces to buy reduced my time spent sourcing from 10 hours a week to 1.  It also reduced my selling time spent by 15 hours a week to 2 hours.  So I was literally spending about 10% of the time I was before doing this and the returns are 2X more.

In the example above, I was offered a rose gold Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore 44mm Camo edition, which is hard to come by, via a fellow watch trader in my network.  The more you learn to leverage relationships with dealers, traders, and your network, the less time you spend having to look for watches.  They start being offered to you as inbound deals.  So I got the piece by making a fair market offer without any negotiation or competition from other buyers.  I wore the watch and took a few photos.  Another buddy of mine saw a dealer wanting the watch and sent me his info.   I then reached out directly on Facebook to the dealer to talk about details.  He tried to use typical dealer tactics to beat me up on price, but I knew exactly what the watch was worth thanks to the weekly mastermind call updates on the watch markets I subscribe to.  I ended up agreeing on selling the piece for $62,000 with his shipping label.  All said and done, I had taken home $12,000 with about 2.5 hours’ worth of active work.

As a more passive investor in timepieces now, my average returns are between 20-50% every 3-8 months.  In order to get more into this strategy, you really want to have at least $35,000 in cash, capital, or credit to invest with.  So it does take a little more money to do it, but the time vs. returns ratio is much higher.

The power of investing in timepieces has me on a schedule like I’m retired at age 35.  The ability to make $30K – $50K a month spending less than 10 hours of time doing this is something I’m not sure I’ll ever want to stop.  It doesn’t take a toll on the body or mind and is a great way to 10-100X returns versus any bank account.

When I realized I was in fact acting as my own wealth manager, and acting as my own bank carrying assets that no one could control or tell me how/when to access a lightbulb went off.  By making returns of 20%+ a month on the total investment portfolio I am beating inflation, while simultaneously allowing myself the freedom to move the money however I want wherever I want.  Timepieces are more liquid than most gold bars and jewelry.  They’re also hard-backed so more secure than stocks and crypto.  If I ever need to leave the country, I can take $150K worth of watches with me and no one will prevent me from doing so.  I can cash out anywhere else for the same if not more due to arbitrage of currency rates, and there are no regulations on the assets to hinder deal flow.  The mobility of money in timepieces is unrivaled versus other asset classes, plain and simple!

When people try to explain other financial vehicles and why they think it’s better, I present them with the data.  I rest my case.  If you’re not investing in luxury timepieces in 2021, you need to do so ASAP before the market gets flooded.  There are limitations with supply especially these days with COVID-19.

If you want an all-encompassing step-by-step guide to getting started and making consistent returns, check out Watch Trading Academy which makes investing simple.  I only wish the information had been available 10 years sooner.


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