Consignment & Resale · Est. Hoboken
Sell at a New York price without living in New York.
Hudson Horological consigns and resells fine watches from Hoboken, New Jersey — eight minutes from Midtown, with working relationships on 47th Street. We put your watch in front of the same buyers a Manhattan dealer would, and you keep the difference between a wholesale offer and a real market sale.
A note on what changed
Hudson Horological began as a fee-only advisory practice — we wrote reports and never touched the transaction. Collectors kept asking the same follow-up question: now sell it for me. So we did. Today we are a consignment house and reseller. The research discipline didn't go anywhere; it's now the front half of every sale we run.
The problem we solve
Distance is the most expensive thing about selling a watch.
If you are in Denver, Charlotte, or Phoenix, your realistic options are a local jeweler who lowballs on principle, a national buy-it-now site that quotes wholesale, or a forum full of people asking for photos at 2 a.m. None of them puts your watch in the room where it actually gets priced.
The local offer
A jeweler outside a major market prices for the risk of holding your watch for a year. That discount comes out of your pocket, and it is usually the largest single number in the whole transaction.
The instant-cash site
Fast, clean, and wholesale by design. You are being quoted what a dealer pays, not what a collector pays — and the spread between those two numbers is often 20–40%.
The private sale
Best price on paper, worst experience in practice: tire-kickers, escrow arguments, chargeback risk, and a wire from a stranger you have to trust with a five-figure asset.
Hoboken → 47th Street
One PATH stop from the densest watch market in America.
New York's Diamond District — 47th Street between Fifth and Sixth — is roughly a square block that moves an enormous share of the country's secondary-market jewelry and watches. Dealers, casemakers, watchmakers, refinishers, gemologists, and buyers with real money sit on top of each other by design.
We are headquartered in Hoboken and in that corridor constantly. When your watch arrives, it gets shown, shopped, and priced against live bids from people who buy for a living — not benchmarked against last year's auction results and a hopeful guess.
What the relationship actually buys you
- Competing offers from multiple dealers instead of one take-it-or-leave-it number
- Same-day second opinions on questionable dials, bezels, and service parts
- Access to in-district watchmakers and refinishers before a sale, when the spend is justified
- A read on what is moving this month, which is what sets the reserve
- Buyers already looking for your reference, rather than an audience you have to build
The process
Five steps, and you never guess where your watch is.
Submit the watch
Reference, condition, box and papers, service history, and a few phone photos. Within two business days you get a written market range, the reserve we would recommend, and the fee tier the sale would fall into.
Ship it insured, or hand it over
We send a prepaid, fully insured label with signature and adult-signature confirmation. Local to the New York metro area? Meet us in Hoboken or in the district and skip shipping entirely.
Authentication and workup
Movement inspection, case and dial assessment, lug and bracelet measurements, timing check, and verification of papers. If something doesn't hold up, you hear it before we list — and you can have the watch back, no fee.
We work it
Photography, listing, and a simultaneous shop of the piece through our dealer and collector network. You approve the reserve before anything goes live and get a written update every two weeks, sale or no sale.
Sale and payout
Nothing closes below your reserve without your written approval. Funds clear, then you are paid by wire or check within three business days of settlement, with an itemized statement showing gross price, fee, and net.
Fee schedule
Published, tiered, and taken only from a completed sale.
The fee is a percentage of the final sale price and it comes off the top at settlement. There is no listing fee, no photography fee, no authentication fee, and no charge if the watch doesn't sell.
| Final sale price | Consignment fee | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Under $10,000 | 20% | Full workup, authentication, photography, listing, dealer shop, negotiation, and settlement. |
| $10,000 – $49,999 | 15% | Everything above, plus targeted placement with dealers who specialize in the reference. |
| $50,000 – $149,999 | 12% | Everything above, plus a written valuation memo and a managed, multi-party bid process. |
| $150,000 and above | 10% | Everything above, handled privately. Terms for full collections and estates are quoted individually. |
Tier is set by the price the watch actually sells for, not by the estimate. Third-party costs — a service the market requires, a manufacturer extract, insured freight beyond the inbound label — are quoted and approved by you in advance and shown as line items on your settlement statement. Nothing gets spent on your watch without your sign-off.
Included, not billed separately
The advisory work is now the first half of the sale.
Authentication, condition documentation, valuation, and insurance-grade records used to be line items on our old price list. They are now simply part of what a consignment gets, because they are what makes the number at the end defensible.
Not selling? We still take on standalone documentation, estate, and insurance work by arrangement — tell us what you need.
- Authentication — movement, case, dial, hands, bracelet, and papers verified against the reference
- Condition report — documented, photographed, and disclosed to the buyer in full
- Market valuation — comparables, recent trade, and current dealer appetite, in writing
- Service triage — an honest call on whether service pays for itself or burns your margin
- Records — a permanent file for the watch you keep, whether it sells or comes home
The other side of the counter
We also sell.
Every piece we list is a watch we have had in hand, opened, measured, and documented. If it isn't on the shelf, tell us the reference and we will work the district for it.
Common questions
Before you ship anything
How long does a consignment usually take?
What if it doesn't sell?
Can I set a minimum price?
Do you buy watches outright?
Is my watch insured while you have it?
What do you take on?
What about franken-watches, redials, and service parts?
Tell us what you have.
Send the reference and a few photos. You will get a written market range, a recommended reserve, and your fee tier within two business days — before you commit to anything.