The secondhand fashion and luxury accessories market has been growing for years, but 2025 marked a particularly high-water mark for the sector. And along with that growth has come a number of new players in the space looking to improve upon the traditional resale business model.
Collected is a secondhand watch marketplace launched this month by Tim Bender and Zach Scott. Scott is a designer who worked at Juul and Scribd, and Bender is a watch expert and founder of the watch reseller Fog City Vintage. Collected is their new venture that gives sellers a place to list their watches, make sales and track data around their inventory.
But there’s a twist in Collected’s business model that intentionally sets it apart from other marketplaces. It doesn’t take a commission from each sale.
“We’re a dealer’s software — more like an operating system for sellers than a marketplace,” Bender said. “We facilitate the transaction, and we charge a SAAS [software-as-a-service] fee.”
Sellers on Collected pay a flat $200-per-month fee to sell on the platform. In the future, Bender said the team will implement a less expensive tier, likely around $200 per year, for people who only want to sell occasionally.
Most other watch marketplaces charge a commission on each sale. Bezel, for example, takes 6.5-12% of every sale. Chrono24 similarly charges around 6.5%. And Bob’s Watches takes anywhere from 15-35%, although it also takes possession of the watch and provides several additional services like professional photography and authentication.
Those commission rates can be a pain point for sellers. Chrono24’s commissions have increased by around 300% over the last six years, according to one estimate, and buyers are always looking for a place to sell that will take less from their net revenue.
Collected is hoping its flat fee will be appealing to sellers. Collected has 600 users signed up on the site, just a month after launch, and Bender said he expects that number to reach over 1,000 by the end of the year. While not all of those users are sellers, it would only take about 600 users for Collected to reach over $1 million in revenue. And with a standard 6% commission, any watch sold for over $3,000 will have a commission higher than $200. Many of the watches sold on the secondhand market are going for well over $10,000.
For reference, Chrono24 has over 35,000 sellers. Bender said if they can convert even a fraction of other marketplaces’ seller communities, it will equate to a successful business.
Amrita Bhasin, an e-commerce expert and founder of the retail tech company Sotira, told Glossy that Collected’s flat-fee structure can be appealing to sellers looking for the most lucrative way to offload watches. For Collected, it’s also a stable source of income. A flat fee is collected every month, while a commission is only collected if a sale is made.
“The model of charging a flat monthly fee can be favorable because it is consistent, reliable revenue, which many marketplaces seek and can struggle to attain,” Bhasin said. “Moreover, it ensures that the quality of people buying and selling is higher. The fee serves to gatekeep marketplace access from sellers who aren’t serious. Sellers who aren’t serious dilute the whole marketplace’s reputation.”
She compared the fee model to Costco, which charges an annual membership fee from its shoppers in exchange for lower bulk prices on goods.
“[Costco] is thriving, and they attribute their efficiency and revenue growth to their membership model,” Bhasin said. “While the watch marketplace could potentially make more profit overall from a commission model, it wouldn’t be as reliable revenue, which is a big con.”
