There are many places to learn about watches online, including magazines like Hodinkee, Blog Pages like our own, and thousands of videos on YouTube. They are not all useful! This Blog Post will help you understand more about how to find high-quality data about all kinds of watch online, and help you learn what to trust when researching the watches you love.

This post is sponsored by Coveted, a new and highly comprehensive watch database, where you can discover, rate, and review luxury watches.

You might want to research a vintage watch before you purchase it like this Breitling Chronomat from the early 1960sA Short History of Watch Websites

The internet was established in the mid-1990s and almost as soon as it became widely used, enthusiasts of different kinds started to share their passion and knowledge for their hobby on Forums. The watch world was no different and forums such as Rolex Forums and Timezone gave watch lovers the chance to find each other to share their collections and knowledge. Over the last 30 years, both broad and specialised forums were established to cover almost every part of the watch world. Many remain active and great sources of answers to difficult to answer questions about a rare or unusual watch.

In the early 2000s various watch blogs became well established and then grew into large online magazines. Three famous examples are Fratello, Hodinkee and A Blog to Watch. All three remain extremely popular and are now well-monetised media businesses. Traditional magazines such as WatchPro and Europa Star built good websites to match their print advertising.

Other enthusiasts began larger projects to help watch lovers find the information they were looking for, especially about vintage, historical and rare timepieces. These come in a few different forms. There is a specialised watch wiki built by a German group that mimics WIkipedia, called Wiki-Watch. There are two large databases of watch movements, or calibres; Calibre Corner and Watch Base These sources are quite clunky and are entirely dependent on the good will of the contributors, but have enormous depth.

Finally, buying platforms like eBay and Chrono24 grew in dominance to establish a place as the largest place to go and research sales prices for pieces, with the majority being modern on Chrono24, but eBay have a very long tail of older watches also. Specialist watch dealers have begun to create much more detailed sales postings for High-End watches, adding to the knowledge available online for example at A Collected Man or Watch Brothers London.

This is a vintage Piaget Dress watch. Deep research into the watch before purchase would be very sensible to avoid mistakes.Today’s Technology

Modern web technology is much superior to that used to build many of the information sources above. Using tools such as hyperlinking, embedding other website snippets and videos, and using Artificial Intelligence to carefully curate and present information on the technical details and history of watches can provide a more comprehensive set of information.

Coveted is a new platform based in California that aim to do all this and more. Starting with the largest and most famous luxury watch brands, they’re building a detailed “one-stop shop” for all the top watch brands, and it includes a comprehensive and automatically updated model catalogue. The founding team are long-term watch collectors and they’ve used this knowledge, plus user feedback, to build the site and its capabilities. A good example is this detailed and comprehensive page about Patek Phillipe.

The Coveted Search barConclusion

We at The Watch Collectors’ Club have always been excited to see people trying new ways to bring information to watch enthusiasts, as we think that many of the historic websites are a poor experience and most Magazine websites are too advertising-driven. We look forward to seeing the team at Coveted continue to build the database and evolve the product. We encourage you to check it out and let us know what you think!