Sell Your Watch Hobart Offers in 24 Hours, Paid by Osko

Getting the watch looked at before it crosses Bass Strait

Hobart is the only Australian capital separated from the mainland by water, and that one fact should shape how you sell. A watch posted to the mainland for assessment crosses Bass Strait before anyone qualified has looked at it. If the answer then comes back lower than the online estimate, the watch is already interstate and your position has moved with it.

So the order matters more here than it does in a mainland capital. Photographs first: the dial, the case back, the engraving between the lugs, and any paperwork you have. Those are usually enough for an indicative figure. Then the watch is examined in person, in Hobart, by a certified watchmaker, and the offer is confirmed or corrected while the watch is still in your hands. Nothing crosses the water until you have accepted a figure from someone who has held it.

Tasmania makes one thing simple. The state moves to daylight saving with New South Wales and Victoria, so Hobart shares a clock with Sydney and Melbourne every day of the year. There is no window to catch and no gap to plan around.

Tasmania issues no second-hand dealer licence

Under section 4(2) of the Second-hand Dealers and Pawnbrokers Act 1994 (Tas), a person proposing to carry on the business of a second-hand dealer at any premises or second-hand goods market must give at least one month's written notice of that intention to the officer in charge of the police station nearest to those premises. Not to a licensing body and not to a consumer regulator: to the nearest station. The Commissioner of Police may then file a notice of objection within 28 days under section 4(5). Section 25 assigns administration of the Act to the Minister for Justice and the Department of Justice.

Which means there is nothing to look up and no Tasmanian licence for anyone to show you. Check the ABN and the ACN instead, and ask what the buyer is authorised as in the state it trades from.

Two provisions worth knowing before a handover:

• Section 9(1) is a bar, not a request. A dealer must not receive any goods in the course of business unless the person selling them produces documentary proof of identity showing their correct name and address. So bring it.
• Section 19 points at you, not at the buyer. A person who sells goods to a dealer in the course of business and fails to give their correct name and address commits an offence. Tasmania is the only one of these eight regimes that puts an express duty on the person selling.

Section 11 then requires a dealer to keep second-hand goods in the form in which they were received, and not dispose of them, for seven days. We are registered in Victoria, number SHD-0017882, and buy from sellers in Tasmania as we do everywhere else. General information about Tasmanian law, not legal advice.