Watch Auctions 101: What You'll Really Pay and How to Set Your Max Bid

I've always known auctions exist. I've bought art at auction. Watches are newer for me, and lately I've been spending real time studying them. Partly for price discovery and partly because I'm placing bids.

I've won on LoupeThis before. Recently I came close on a much bigger auction, and going into the last few minutes I was the high bidder. I got nervous. Holy cow, I'm actually going to win this. Do I really want it at this price?

If you participate in auctions, I bet you know what I'm talking about. It's the moment of uh-oh. It's becoming real.

What made it worse is that the number on my screen wasn't the number I was about to pay. Most auction houses don't put the real number in front of you, and working it out in the heat of the moment isn't easy. So I worked it out ahead of time for every house I'm watching.

What is a buyer's premium?

A buyer's premium is a percentage of the hammer price that the winning bidder pays the auction house, on top of the winning bid. At Christie's, Sotheby's, Phillips and Bonhams it runs 27% to 30% on most watches in 2026.

The hammer price is the winning bid, the number the auctioneer calls or your app shows. The premium gets added to that. Sales tax or VAT usually applies to the hammer and the premium combined, based on where the watch ships. After that come shipping and insurance, card fees, platform fees if you bid through a third-party site, and import duties or tariffs if the watch crosses a border.

None of this is secret. It's all in the conditions of sale. It just isn't on the bid button. Estimates leave out the premium, and so does the live number.

How much does a $20,000 watch at auction really cost?

At a 28% premium, shipped to Massachusetts with 6.25% sales tax, a $20,000 hammer costs about $27,200 before shipping:

• Hammer: $20,000

• Buyer's premium: $5,600

• Sales tax on both: $1,600

• Total: $27,200

That's 36% more than the number you "won" at.

The increments are where it gets you. If bidding is moving $1,000 at a time, each click really costs about $1,360. Five quick clicks at the end and you've added close to $7,000.

How do you calculate your maximum bid?

Start with what you're willing to pay all in, then divide by one plus the premium and one plus the tax. That's your hammer ceiling.

Max hammer = all-in budget ÷ (1 + buyer's premium) ÷ (1 + sales tax)

If I'm willing to spend $30,000 total, a 28% premium and 6.25% tax put my ceiling at about $22,000. On LoupeThis, at 10%, the same $30,000 gets me to about $25,700. That's roughly $3,600 of difference in what I can bid with the exact same budget.

I write the ceiling down before the auction opens and keep it on my phone. It's smaller than my budget, and that's the point.

Buyer's premiums at Christie's, Sotheby's, Phillips, Bonhams, Marteau & Co, LoupeThis and Bezel

Rates as of October 31, 2026. They change a lot (three of the big houses raised them this year), so check the conditions of sale for the specific auction before you bid.

*Assumes 6.25% sales tax on hammer plus premium. Excludes shipping and insurance.

Christie's moved to 28% on September 1, matching what Sotheby's did in February. Bonhams added a 30% tier on October 1. Phillips left watches out of its 2025 fee overhaul. It also has Priority Bidding, which lowers the premium if you place a binding bid at or above the low estimate at least 48 hours before a live sale. Ask whether it covers the watch sale you're looking at, because it rewards the exact discipline I'm trying to build.

The big four

Christie's, Sotheby's, Phillips and Bonhams are where the headline watches trade, and Phillips has become the center of gravity for serious collectors. You get specialists, condition reports, provenance work and a public price record. That's what the premium pays for. You're also sitting in a room built to keep you bidding, kinda like how Vegas keeps you gambling.

Geneva auction week starts next week, so plenty of people are about to learn all of this in Swiss francs.

Why I like Marteau & Co (and why it's expensive)

My favorite auction curation and style right now comes from the guys at Marteau & Co. Arthur Touchot and Léonard Pictet started it in Geneva in 2025, online only, built around independent watchmakers. They're curating incredible independent pieces and photographing them exquisitely. It's an auction house born modern, for 2026.

The fees are different too. Sellers pay nothing and buyers pay 20%, and 3% of the hammer comes out of that 20% and goes to the watchmaker who made the piece. The art world has had resale rights for artists for years. Marteau is the first to do it for watchmakers.

With that said, their pieces are setting records: Kari Voutilainen, Vianney Halter, Holthrinrichs, a Qian GuoBiao prototype at CHF 102,000. I bet that's great for the makers. For me, the consumer, it's expensive :)

I only understood why once I ran the numbers. A lower premium doesn't make the watch cheaper. Serious bidders walk in with an all-in number, and when the fee drops, they spend the savings on the hammer. Lower-fee houses tend to get higher hammers, which become the records, which become the comps everyone else prices from. What you pay in total can land in about the same place.

If you're in the US, Marteau sells in Swiss francs out of Geneva, so add the exchange rate and any import duties or tariffs.

LoupeThis and Bezel

LoupeThis is online and timed, with a 10% buyer's premium against 27% to 30% at the majors. I've bought there and it was easy. The price points are friendlier and the catalog is broader.

Bezel runs seven-day auctions in its app and authenticates everything in house. If a bid comes in during the final two minutes, the clock extends. I get why. I also know that's exactly where the uh-oh lives. Bezel lists shipping, a buyer protection fee and card processing on top of the hammer, plus sales tax, so read its fee page first.

Cheaper and easier to bid also means easier to overbid.

Bidding with your heart

I can see how it's super easy to bid with your heart and not just your head. You get caught up in the moment. Kinda like playing craps on a hot table. Easy to throw a few more chips down, and all of a sudden you realize just how much is on the table.

What I do now:

• I set the all-in number first, turn it into a hammer ceiling, and write it down.

• I leave a max bid early and close the app. If I know I'll chase, I don't watch the last two minutes.

• I check recent results for the same reference before the sale, not during it.

• I treat the uh-oh as information. If winning makes me nervous instead of happy, something's off.

What is the winner's curse at watch auctions?

The winner's curse is the tendency for the winner of an auction to overpay, because winning means you valued the item higher than everyone else bidding.

KingFlum just wrote about this on ScrewDownCrown, timed for Geneva: Did you win, or did you just overpay? He traces the idea back to oil companies overpaying for drilling leases in the early 1970s, then to a 1983 experiment by Bazerman and Samuelson where MBA students bid on jars of coins. As a group the students guessed low, at about 64% of what the jars held. The winning bids still came in around 125% of the real value.

His explanation of why is simple. Assume each bidder is as likely to guess high as low. The top bid only lands under true value if every single bidder guessed low, and with ten bidders that happens about once in 1,024 auctions. More bidders, bigger curse. The full piece is for paid subscribers and worth it.

My one addition: the curse bites hardest when you're bidding on what a watch is worth to the market. If it's a watch you'll wear for twenty years and you know your number, overpaying a little can be fine. The trouble starts when you tell yourself it's a keeper and you're really bidding on resale.

The funny business

There's some shady business in the world of auctions too. The fact that watches are at auction, and increasingly so, tells you there's real demand and real money in the market for them. When there's real money at stake, funny business follows.

Is there market manipulation? Likely. Is there auction manipulation? Maybe. A few things I keep in mind:

• The catalog symbols matter. Guarantees, irrevocable bids and third-party financial interests are disclosed there, and they tell you someone with a stake in the result may be bidding.

• At many houses the auctioneer can bid on the seller's behalf up to the reserve. It's legal and it's in the conditions of sale, but it means early bidding isn't always real demand.

• A record is also a marketing event. It sets the comp everyone else prices from, so it's fair to ask who benefits from that number.

There's always someone smarter than you, and there's also someone dirtier than you. Keep your head on straight and play cautiously optimistic.