'I was offered £80,000 for a watch I bought in 2015 for £7,000'

telegraph.co.uk:

expensive mortgage – but in his spare time he trades watches worth six figures, and what started as a hobby has had a measurable impact on his life and finances.“Watches fascinate me because they are outliers,” he says. “Until recently, they were objects that everyone needed to have, which means they are time capsules for each period – historical items that can invoke the war or the pop art era.

It’s this unique intersection of history, design, art, mechanics and engineering that you don’t find elsewhere.”One of his timepieces belonged to a Czechoslovakian fighter pilot in the Second World War and the scratches and dents are evocative of its extraordinary past; another Seiko model was owned by a Japanese businessman in the 1960s and around its delicate face is an internal rotating bezel showing the time in all the global capitals.But alongside these historical gems, John has made serious – some would say easy – money from selling big brand watches on the second-hand market.

He was offered £80,000 last year for a Patek Philippe model he bought for £7,000 in 2015, and in 2021 sold an Audemars Piguet for six figures that had originally cost him a fraction of that.“It’s a bit like climbing the housing ladder,” he says. “I started with nothing in 2010 and made some money on a few small designs, and then suddenly found myself in the pandemic negotiating prices above my annual salary.”Over the past decade, the watch market has exploded.

Ten years ago, you could walk into a Rolex or Patek Philippe store and buy one of their most popular watches off the shelf.