Win A Watch In A Poker Game? There's An Easy Way To Sell It

Watches and poker. The two go together in more ways than one.

Poker is obviously a game played with the hands, so having a nice watch on your wrist is very visible, and it says something. Poker pros are known for collecting expensive watches and showing them off at the table. It’s more common to show off a nice watch than a WSOP bracelet, if you have one. You didn’t get lucky to have that nice watch, but you might have ran like a god to win that piece of poker hardware.

Some of the most baller watches in the poker community are Bryn Kenney’s Cartier Pasha de Cartier Diamond Bezel 18K Gold, Eugene Katchalov’s Audemars Piguet Prestige Sports Collection Royal Oak Openworked and Noah Schwartz’ Hublot King Power Unico Ceramic King Gold 48mm. The estimated combined value of those watches is nearly $90,000.

It’s no surprise that in private poker games, where the game isn’t controlled by a casino that only allows chips to play, watches are sometimes used as collateral. The value of certain watches is well-known to many, so it doesn’t take rocket science to use it for a buy-in, or even a bet or a call.

Other top luxury watch brands that are common in poker circles include Breitling, Ebel, Omega, Rolex and TAG Heuer. Watches from those brands can cost up to $20,000.

Thanks to laws unfavorable to poker, grinders in South Carolina are forced to take poker underground. The more underground the game gets, the more tricky it is to get the funds needed to play with. Here watches can serve a function more important than displaying your wealth. This isn’t just something that happens in Hollywood movies. From an article on the scene in Greenville, SC:

At the scene’s peak, the bigger tournaments had vodka company hostesses and T-shirt sponsors. It wasn’t uncommon to find a moneyed restaurateur, a retired NFL player or a beefy sports agent among the dozens of people sitting in a poker room. Breitling watches went up as collateral. Other games went off for big five-figure sums on nothing but a player’s word and his online Bank of America statement. The games ran in a private room of an upscale Asian restaurant, a gated community starter castle, country club meeting rooms, an office park on the busiest street in town and a basement bar in Greenville’s tony downtown business district.

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