Watches - Second Hand Luxury

SECOND HAND WATCH sellers have always had a shaky relationship with luxury watch brands and retailers. They're often painted as purveyors of cheap pre-owned timepieces - often of dubious origins - out to steal their 'authorised' business. Of course, the brands want nothing to do with them.

Watchbox, a global online platform for pre-owned luxury timepieces, wants to overturn this perception and stake its claim as a bonafide player in the industry. And co-founder Danny Govberg predicts that customers, who already see second hand watches in a new light, will drive the change.

"It's just the next evolution of fun," says the US-based Mr Govberg, who has been in the watch business since 1983. "For (the last) 25 years, fun was just buying new because we didn't have them, we'd just started. It was about buying and accumulating. Now, the joy is in trading them."