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A Guide Thrift Shop Watch Hunting.
I've been picking up watches at Thrift Shops and Garage Sales for about three years. The thrill of finding an automatic Omega or a Gallet for $15 is probably close to that of being a miner in the days of the Gold Rush finding one little treasure can keep you going for years.
You must pan a lot of dirt before you find any gold. Most timepieces that end up in thrift shops or junk stores are there because they are junk one jewel fakes, discoloured dials, cracked crystals, etc., are the norm.
When something special does turn up, it's rarely ever a Rolex, Cartier, Longines or any other luxury brand. Here's a list of better names you're likely to come across: Bulova, Elgin, Benrus, Waltham, Seiko, Gruen, Wittnauer. Here in Canada, private label names like Solar, Birks, Rideau and Tradition often house movements by manufactories like Rolex, Gallet and A. Schild.
To improve your odds of finding treasure, it's a good idea to set some guidelines for yourself. When you're new to collecting, taking a scattershot approach is common because you may not know what exactly it is that you're looking for. But some simple rules (ie. Looking for pre-1960 timepieces or selecting only styles with sub seconds) can help you narrow your focus. (Even if you buy exclusively from dealers, you may want to establish limits or else you'll end up with 100 watches.)
Personally, I don't buy a watch unless I mean to keep and wear it but I also realize that sometimes I have to thin the herd. I like to know that if I have to sell it, I'll at least get back what I put into.
I once spent $30 on a crownless Solar with a broken winding stem because it was beautiful. Fortunately for me, it also housed a Gallet movement, so I knew that if I didn't get it fixed, I could probably get $30 for the movement. I also once spent $60 to repair a Benrus that was working but needed a new crystal. Fortunately I love it, because I don't think I'd get more than $30 for it.
The lesson of the above anecdotes is if you're going to go the thrift shop route, find a good watchmaker and consider setting a spending cap.
Unless it's a name or style that I've been searching for for thousands of years, I try not to spend more than $36 on a thrift store find. If the mechanism isn't working, if the dial or case are damaged or if the crown is missing, then you know you'll have to spend at least $15 to $100 on repairs. Unless it's for parts, take a pass on damaged goods. For no name watches, even minty working ones, I wouldn't spend more than $5.
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