Here is a set of short, slightly irreverent and frank (we tell it like we found it) reviews of some of the vintage watch-shops that we discovered whilst visiting Hong Kong in mid 2009. We were looking for vintage watch shops mostly around Tsim Sha Tsu (TST) and only strayed off the beaten track a little whilst doing this so even with only a short amount of time in country you should be able to visit many of these even if you’re only stopping off in Hong Kong for a few hours.

Starting at Middle Road...

 

Pak Lee (TST). Good selection of vintage Rolex and modern watches e.g. Rolex and Panerai. We didn’t find the sales guys that friendly to be honest, both times we ventured in (different days) the 3 sales staff seemed more wrapped up in the customer they had already to talk or show things to us. Perhaps their English isn’t that good? Either way we’d have loved to have looked at the 1665 they had and they may have had a sale, who knows...

HMS had a good selection of vintage and modern pieces but sadly the really nice Rolex watches (Daytona especially) in the display cases inside were not for sale, not that we could have afforded them anyway! One of the few smaller shops that is open on Sundays.

We started around the Middle Road area and then up along Nathan Road. Whilst avoiding the tailor touts and copy watch sellers and skirting past Chungking mansions (we’ve never felt that there was much of any use for a tourist WIS in there to be honest) through the back around Carnarvon Road and then down through Kimberly road.

 

We also journeyed up to Mong Kok and across to the island to the Cat Street Market area. Naturally, this isn’t conclusive of what’s on offer in Hong Kong but it at least gives some pointers for those WIS travellers on a mission.

House Co. In the Far East Mansions. John Lee is a brilliant guy with a great collection on display. He’s only too happy to sit and chat and the hours passed quickly with him. Bear in mind John gets to work late (4-ish is early for him) but he stays quite late most nights.

Chronometer Vintage Timepieces, one of the many at this location. The owner is Wing Man and his shop had some cracking watches that you don’t often see like the Omega PloProf, Seamaster 1000m and other cool vintage watches. The Hong Kong market is often swayed in the favour of Rolex and its nice to see some vintage Omegas amongst all the Panerai and Rolex etc.

 

Watches Collection Limited, another Holiday Inn shop. Good selection again and nice friendly staff.

Further Afield

WatchNavi – Shop Address: Shop 115, 1/F., In's Point, 530-544 Nathan Road, Yau Ma Tei, Kowloon, Hong Kong  - An ebay seller. Not really sure what he had but after an exhausting trip away from the more normal touristy TST up to Mong Kok, we were a little disappointed to find he was closed. Mong Kok is a cheaper area so perhaps he had some better prices than his ebay listings and we could have had a good deal, but never found out. Shame.

Kimberly Road

Champagne Court – Full of watch shops selling mostly used modern watches but occasionally you can find some vintage gems. Lots of recent Rolex watches are here at good prices. We looked in a number of the shops and whilst the staff didn’t seem that friendly the prices were slightly better than the Holiday Inn.

Clocks and Watches, Near Cat Street Market. Small shop next door to another small watch place. He had some cool rare vintage watches and the odd clock. He was happy to show them to us and talk about them. Seemed a genuine bloke and would have chatted for ages if we hadn’t needed to get on to the tat and fake antiques up on Cat street.

Pak Lee (Central)– This shop is just off Des Moines road but sadly we didn’t get a card... To be honest whilst the staff were even more welcoming than the bunch in the TST shop, the selection was very sparse and we left quite quickly. Considering this one isn’t easy to find its not a rush to see.

GENERAL INFO

Most of the time these shops will quote you a better price than the ticket if you ask, but they will state that its ‘for cash...’ That’s not really very helpful for a tourist. Sadly we didn’t bring 90,000 HK$ in used bills with us, in fact if we had we expect we’d have been arrested for money trafficking at customs. Ok, joking aside this is more for money transfers, but as you cant do that locally without a HK bank account is a bit academic. Anyway the HK$500 they usually discount isn’t big enough to worry about and you should haggle more if you really want something... So, always ask for a better price, you might get it.

Berne Horology - We have to say in the past few years of visiting HK and this shop its not changed at all. In all that time we found it to be least exciting watch shop (lots small 50s watches and hardly any divers watches) with the rudest staff. We’ve met a number of the staff including the owner and not been impressed. One time we gently asked the sales lady to move her hands off the counter so we could look and immediately found what looked like a nice SM300. Politely asking (you feel you have to here) to look at it she grabbed it from under counter and slammed it onto the glass top... Now we’re sorry she has to work here, but if the likes of us guys don’t get excited enough to buy how will they keep going? Looking at the price for the actually quite poor looking SM300, perhaps that’s the key. It was a lot of money. Way too much for the condition... And no way were we about to haggle with this fierce lady, so perhaps paying full price for not so nice items is their plan. We walked... Don’t think we will bother going back either.

Modern watch purchases...

 

Well you cant usually go wrong with buying new in Hong Kong as there is almost always some discount to be had even on the already tax free prices. At the time of writing typically Rolex and Tudor is 8%, Omega 10%, Breitling 30% etc etc. The boutique shops wont discount at all so look for a normal AD. Limited and hard to find watches are usually not discounted at all, so don’t expect to get a discount on a stainless steel Daytona, in fact we would be surprised if you even found one at an AD. However saying that you can usually find ‘hard to find’ or ‘wait list only’ watches in HK that you might not see in other countries, examples of those are Rolex GV and LV, IWC Big Pilot and of course models so far up the ranges of GO, Patek and AP that your sticky fingers would have to be sanitised before handling them back home.

Pawn brokers...

 

Hong Kong has many pawn brokers which are easy to spot if you know to look for the batwings logo outside the door, but we found most to be as expensive as the shops and many watches like Rolex had no box/papers. We also think you need to seriously know what you’re doing with these shops, so unless you do perhaps its best you stay away.

Warranty...

 

To avoid bait-n-switch and warranty issues, modern watches should only be bought from ADs and the huge watch chain stores are good bets. Between Zurich Watch, Emperor Watch and Jewellery, Chow Tai Fook, Yes Watch, and Carlson you should be able to find the brands you want. In our mind the best of these modern shops for pure range (over 40 brands stocked!) seems to be on the left as you head away from Central down Des Moines road and has a vast basement with numerous brands under the more normal Rolex/Tudor display upstairs. Sadly we didn’t get a card from them so cant pinpoint it exactly for you, but its easy to find.

Nathan Road

 

The Holiday Inn. This hotel has a basement mall that houses some very nice shops including a number of watch shops, most of which sell used as well as new watches.

NB. Prices seem more expensive in the Holiday Inn than elsewhere but we guess the rents aren’t cheap as its a great tourist trap being both on Nathan Road and in a hotel.

Carnarvon Road

 

HMS Watches, Carnarvon Road. Nice blokes who always seemed to be eating when we dropped in. They were happy to down the chopsticks and show us watches though.

About this Article...

 

As many of you may be aware, DeskDivers is multinational and with all our members living in different countries we often have to travel to meet up and work together. When we do that we like to go watch shopping as we’re sure you all do too. Sadly we found it hard to find information about the watch shops in various big cities online and we assume that we are not the only ones. To try and remedy this we decided that we should start to add pages to the DeskDivers website that outline at least some of what we found when looking for vintage watches on our travels in the hope it might help those who visit these places.

 

In the future we hope to bring you information on Singapore, Paris, London and Sydney.

 

If you know of any more shops and think we should include them in a follow up to this review then please do send the information in. We cant promise to add them quickly or make changes to this page often as we don’t travel to all these cities that often, but we will update it as and when more info comes to light.

 

If you’re one of the shops we reviewed and don’t like what we said, well... maybe you should make some changes instead of getting upset with us?! we only write what we felt when we came through your door.

 

Disclaimer:

 

-These reviews are our opinion and as said we are just reviewing each shop as we saw it on one or two visits.

-Over time some of these guys may move and some my go out of business, so please don’t moan to us if when you go searching them out you don’t find them and have a wasted journey...