You’ll probably notice at some point or another that many of your watch searches on eBay come up with little results. You’ll hear about a great small watch maker based out of Germany or Switzerland, go to eBay or the forums to see what you can find, and nothing! Are people not selling these watches? Are they so rare? No, the simple answer is that very few make it to the US.

In fact, even while this statistic is rising, the US only consumes about 15% of the wrist watch market. Newly invigorated marketing efforts are attempting to remedy this, but the bottom line is that the US is often overlooked when it comes to distribution of many watches. Europe, the Middle East, and Asia enjoy most of where the watches are going. Especially when it comes to the “boutique” makers.

This seems a strange fact, but when it comes down to it, watch makers feels that the US consumers just don’t appreciate watches like some other countries do. Take the fact that most of the watches sold in the US are inexpensive Timex, Citizen, Seiko, Fossil, and other “budget makers,” and a company with little margin in Europe does not want to have to compete with their advertising. And at the same time, they feel frustrated in trying to ever persuade the average US consumer that it is worth spending $100.00 on a watch. You see, watch making for many is a labor of love, or a small family business. The craftsman type of mentality that died in the US a while ago, is still alive and kicking in much of Europe. These small operations either cannot afford, or do not want to deal with all the headaches involved in exporting goods to the US. Part of the reason for this is that they would have to charge the consumer so much more because of all the middleman fees.

So take eBay.de, Germany’s eBay portal which is entirely in German, and dedicated for European, but mostly German audiences. If you conduct a search there, which is not cross-indexed with eBay.com, you will find a whole new world of available watches. The first time I discovered this I was searching for Marcello C and Sinn watches. Marcello C watches rarely show up on eBay.com, but on eBay.de, there are always at least a few watches. Same goes for Sinn watches, which enjoy a bountiful following in Germany where they are made.

Now, as a US eBay user you certainly can use eBay.de if you can properly translate the pages or communicate with the seller. This is actually relatively simple given Google’s language tools which will do reasonable translations. The biggest problem however is getting the sellers to ship to the US. Most of the time they say that they will only ship within Germany, or the European Union. This is probably a tax and customs issues, but they are missing out on a big market. I am honestly not sure how the entire system works as I do not speak German, but be weary of blindly bidding on these watches.

If you do see a watch on eBay.de that you love, I would recommend an attempt to contact the seller (in German) and ask if they will accept your US bid and ship to the US. When sending the message to them, make sure to say that you used Google Language tools and that you apologize for any odd grammar. They will understand, but you don’t want to come across as odd or shady given the lack of proper writing. A good deal of the time, the sellers will be amenable to your requests given your willingness to pay for the increased shipping and assisting them were necessary.

If you are looking for a rare watch, I highly recommend at least using this to look, much of the time you will find available items that aren’t intended for US sale. If you get one, you can proudly boast that your watch is very limited and none were ever sold in the US. No worries about seeing anyone else with one.