Antique Pocketwatch - value and how to sell? Help!

[jpoihnnter]

We've recently been given a few antique pocket watches and as they have no sentimental value, we'd like to sell them and use the $$ to pay down our mortgage.  After spending quite a bit of time looking on the internet, I'm a little stuck as to their value and where to sell them?  I've gone to some local jewelry stores, and they just want to buy them for the gold value of the case - they don't really care about the watches themselves.  There's no "watch shops" around here that deal in these...

I want to make sure that we get a fair value for them, but I'm stuck as to where to go to 1. determine what that is, as there is a ton of variability in price and 2. where to actually sell them?

Anyone have an idea, or have experience here?

[Bee763]

I don't know if it's relevant in your situation, but my Mother-in-Law had some pocket watches in her father's estate here in the UK that she was trying to work out what to do with and at least one specialist wouldn't even value them without provenance showing that she was the legitimate owner.

All I can think to find out a bit more would be to google pocket watch collector forums - I've had good luck finding values for coins through these kind of places and you might be able to track down contact details for the kind of specialist you would need.

[Dave1442397]

If you got to a site like Timezone.com, you can post some pics and ask people to give you advice via pm or email.

You have to have 100 posts to sell watches there, but it might be a good option.

Public forum - http://forums.timezone.com/index.php?t=threadt&frm_id=4

Sales forum under $5000 - http://forums.timezone.com/index.php?t=threadt&frm_id=32

Sales over $5000 - http://forums.timezone.com/index.php?t=threadt&frm_id=71

Do a search on "pocket" and you can see some sales listings that might help. Search for whatever brand you have to narrow it down a bit.
http://forums.timezone.com/search/?q=pocket&f=32&s=0