What's specific to San Francisco

San Francisco is the easiest of the four California cities here to comply with, and the reason is instructive: in 2012 it repealed most of its own secondhand-dealer machinery and left the state's in place. What remains is a definition, a permit, and a fee. Everything you actually do day-to-day is in the California guide.

Watches, by name, above $40

§ 1279(b) defines Covered Secondhand Goods in seven categories. Two reach a watch dealer:

• (1) tangible personal property with a serial number or personalized initials or inscription, or bearing evidence of having had one; and
• (4) jewelry and watches — but excluding jewelry and watches with a fair market value as a secondhand good of $40.00 or less.

That is about as unambiguous as municipal drafting gets. No arguing about whether a steel sports watch is "jewelry," as Florida dealers must; no inferring coverage from a serial-number test alone, as in San Jose. If you trade watches worth more than $40 in San Francisco, you need the permit.

§ 1279(a) then defines a Secondhand Dealer as anyone engaging in, conducting, managing or carrying on the business of buying, selling, or otherwise dealing, in whole or in part, in those goods. "In part" matters: a business that mostly does something else is still inside it.

The exemption most vintage dealers will not qualify for

The one carve-out in the definition is the Antique Dealer (§ 1279(c)): a retail business where at least 90 percent of the Covered Secondhand Goods available for purchase on July 1 of each year are more than 80 years old.

Read that against this trade before relying on it. Eighty years from 2026 means 1946 or earlier — which excludes essentially the entire collectible market that dealers call vintage. And the 90 percent test is measured on a fixed annual date across everything you have for sale. Anyone claiming the exemption must provide records and information to the Chief of Police to establish it.

What it costs

• $200 — Second Hand Dealer filing fee, payable in advance with the application to the Police Department (Police Code § 2.26).
• $0 — the annual licence fee for a Second Hand Dealer (§ 2.27).
• $300 — the state's Department of Justice fee, every two years.

A $0 annual licence is not a drafting error; the schedule prints it as zero while charging, for comparison, $1,091 for a Second Hand Dealer in Auto Accessories at the filing stage. Licence fees are still due to the Tax Collector on or before March 31 each year under Business and Tax Regulations Code § 76.1, so the filing obligation survives the zero.

One caveat worth carrying: § 2.31 lets the Controller adjust both schedules each year for CPI without further action by the Board of Supervisors — the Police Department submits its schedule by April 15 and the Controller reports the new one by May 15. Confirm the current figure rather than budgeting from this page a year from now.

Who grants it

§ 1279.1(a): you apply to the Chief of Police. The Chief may grant the application, and you then receive the licence from the Tax Collector on payment of the licence fee. The Chief may revoke the permit after a hearing on good cause shown (§ 1279.1(b)).

§ 1279.1(c) lets the Chief adopt rules and regulations for secondhand dealers after a noticed public hearing, effective 10 days after adoption — but expressly only where they do not conflict with the article or with State laws regulating secondhand dealers. That last clause is the whole San Francisco story in miniature.

What San Francisco does not do

There is no city holding period, no city reporting requirement, no hours-of-business restriction, and no city records-retention rule for secondhand dealers. The sections that once sat beside § 1279 — §§ 1279.2, 1280, 1280.1 and 1281 — were all repealed by Ordinance 196-12, effective 24 October 2012.

So the hold on a watch you buy in San Francisco is the state's seven days from the CAPSS report, five if you record the buyer's name, address and a contact. Set against San Diego and San Jose, both of which still print 30 days in ordinances the state may have preempted, that is a materially different business to run — and the carrying cost article is where to see what those extra weeks are worth.

Business registration

Separately from the permit, San Francisco requires every person engaging in business in the City to register within 30 days of commencing, display the certificate conspicuously, and renew every year by the last day in February. Registration runs April 1 to March 31.

The fee is banded on your prior-year San Francisco gross receipts. For the registration year beginning April 1, 2026:

• $0 – $100,000 — $55, plus a $4 state fee
• $100,000.01 – $250,000 — $95, plus a $4 state fee
• $250,000.01 – $500,000 — $160, plus a $4 state fee
• $500,000.01 – $750,000 — $320, plus a $4 state fee
• $750,000.01 – $1,000,000 — $440, plus a $4 state fee

For a dealer turning over well under $100,000 in the city, the whole municipal cost of being legitimate here is $200 once and $59 a year — before the state's $300 every two years.