Landed cost: shipping, insurance and import

Landed cost is what the watch actually cost you to own, delivered, before you sell it. It is the number the margin has to beat, and it is almost always higher than the invoice.

What goes in

  1. The price you paid. The hammer at auction, or the asking price in a private sale.
  2. The buyer's premium, if you bought at auction. A percentage of the hammer, so it scales with the price. This is the line most often missing.
  3. Shipping. International parcel shipping on a watch with a box and papers is not cheap, and it is not the same as domestic.
  4. Insurance. If you are not insuring a four-figure parcel in transit, you have decided to carry that risk yourself. Either way it is a cost, in money or in exposure.
  5. Import duty and tax. Where it applies, it is usually charged on the item value plus the shipping, which means the shipping is taxed too. Check your own jurisdiction: the rules and the rates differ, and they change.
  6. Service, repair and parts. A watch due a service is not the watch in the listing. Budget it before you buy, not after.

Worked example

LineAmount
Hammer4,000.00
Buyer's premium at an example 20 percent800.00
Shipping and insurance90.00
Duty at an example 8 percent of (hammer + shipping)327.20
Service350.00
Landed cost5,567.20

Note what the duty is charged on: the hammer and the shipping, not just the watch. And note that the landed cost of 5,567.20 is 39 percent above the 4,000 hammer. Any deal priced against the hammer is being priced against a number that stopped being true at the auctioneer's gavel.

The rule of thumb that survives

Add every cost that will have left your account before the watch is sellable, and only then ask what it has to sell for. If the answer is higher than the market for that reference, the correct decision is not to buy. Flip Ledger shows that answer while you are looking at the listing, rather than after.

Run these numbers on the listing you are looking at

Flip Ledger does this arithmetic in the eBay or Chrono24 page you already have open, using your own rate tables. The free tier is a complete tool, permanently: landed cost, the fee stack, net proceeds, margin and the consignment split, with no account and nothing limited by time or by count.

Get it on the Chrome Web Store See the comps view ($13 once)

Flip Ledger is a Chrome extension for watch dealers. Free tier is a complete tool, permanently.