Open research methods

Watch-Market Research Protocols: Methods Before Results

Read and download Enjoy Watches' transparent research protocols for selling costs, owner decisions, and box-and-papers comparisons before any results are claimed.

Published August 24, 2026 · Scheduled source review by November 24, 2026

A method is not a finding. Enjoy Watches publishes the protocols below before collecting or interpreting results so readers can see the question, inclusion rules, exclusions, release threshold, and limitations in advance. None of these protocols is a market index, valuation dataset, study result, fee schedule, or recommendation.

The separately released research datasets are editorial history and scenario indexes rather than results from these proposed market studies. Their landing pages publish versions, fields, checksums, citation guidance, transforms, and limits beside the brand-history, tool-history, and future-tool downloads.

Current research status

Table: Current research status
Protocol Current status What is not being claimed
Watch Selling Cost Observatory Release-candidate method; public fee rows require a second human source check before release A current fee database, universal selling cost, ranking, or seller-net forecast
Seller Decision Diary Recruitment materials prepared; zero participants and zero observations Typical seller behavior, channel performance, fraud rates, or time-to-sale benchmarks
Box-and-Papers Paired-Sales Pilot Preregistered protocol; collection not started A universal premium, causal effect, or price adjustment for documents or packaging

1. Watch Selling Cost Observatory

The observatory is designed to record public, directly citable price bases and cost categories across selling routes. Its purpose is to keep asking prices, dealer bids, auction hammer prices, buyer all-in totals, seller gross, and seller net from being mixed together.

It will not infer negotiated commissions, fill missing rates with an industry percentage, rank operators, or use a public schedule to promise a seller outcome. Any future row must preserve the operator, market, price basis, fee side, current-source scope, access date, and review state. A rate marked review_required is not a current rate to quote.

Download the Watch Selling Cost Observatory method (Markdown)

2. Seller Decision Diary

The diary is a proposed, consent-governed study of how a self-selected group of owners compares selling channels. It has zero participants and zero observations. It will not launch until a real privacy owner, reviewer, publisher, secure collection method, retention/deletion process, and independently reproducible aggregation plan exist.

If launched, the study would keep contact/consent information separate from research responses and exclude full serial numbers, identity documents, addresses, account information, buyer identities, and free-text accusations. It would release only appropriately suppressed aggregates and would describe the resulting sample as self-selected.

Download the Seller Decision Diary protocol (Markdown)

Download the versioned, header-only Seller Decision Diary schema (CSV)

3. Box-and-Papers Paired-Sales Pilot

This preregistered pilot asks a narrow question: within a defined reference, observation window, and completed-sale set, is documentation status associated with a difference after visible differences are recorded? It does not ask whether all watches with a box or papers deserve a fixed premium.

Before collection, the reference, period, eligible sources, terms-of-use boundaries, condition fields, document classes, duplicate detection, exclusion rules, and minimum sample must be fixed by a named researcher and independent reviewer. The protocol requires an inconclusive result when the permitted sample, documentation evidence, price basis, or matching quality is inadequate.

Download the Box-and-Papers Paired-Sales Pilot protocol (Markdown)

Download the versioned, header-only paired-sales schema (CSV)

Zero-data schema dictionary

The two CSV schemas contain field names and zero data rows. Publishing the headers makes the proposed collection boundaries inspectable without implying recruitment, observations or results.

Table: Zero-data schema dictionary
Schema Field groups Deliberate boundary
Seller Decision Diary consent version/date, collection window, broad watch/value/geography bands, channels and offers considered, decision/time bands, optional final-net band, evidence/missingness, withdrawal, anonymization, inclusion and review status No name, email, address, full serial, document image, account number, buyer identity or free-text accusation
Box-and-Papers Paired-Sales Pilot record/reference/material, sale date/venue/country/currency, price basis, document/box class, bracelet/strap, visible condition, source/rights, deduplication, inclusion and reviewer status No active listing treated as a sale, no binary “full set” shortcut, and no observation without a rights/source status

These schemas are planning instruments. A later populated release would require the named people, permissions, privacy controls, frozen rules, exclusion log, reproduction and minimum sample described in the corresponding protocol.

What a future release must include

No protocol may become a results page merely because a calendar says it is time to publish. A results release must include the approved method version, named accountable people, dates, eligible source and rights rules, sample count, missingness, exclusion log, data dictionary, transformation method, reviewer reproduction, limits, conflicts, and correction route. Where lawful and permitted, it should expose the underlying permitted records or explain exactly why they cannot be shared.

Until then, use the live price vocabulary, comparable-sales method, and net-proceeds calculator for a specific research task. Those aids make assumptions visible; they do not substitute for future research findings.

Challenge the method

Method criticism is welcome before data collection begins. To point out an omitted variable, unsafe field, rights issue, privacy risk, or unsupported planned inference, use the corrections process and include the protocol name, section, and supporting evidence. We will distinguish a correction to a published method from a later study result.