He’s also my business partner. He kept his watch collection with me since his wife doesn’t allow him to buy watches and made me promise not to ever tell his wife about them. Not only because she doesn’t like it but also because she will definitely ask him to sell them and probably spend the money on clothes and traveling like she often does.
He lets me use the watches in the condition that I don’t cause any damage. But now that he passed away it doesn’t feel right any more.
His watch collection is worth about 200K$ in todays market. I think the lawful and ethical thing to do is to break the promise and tell his wife but I’m not sure that’s the right thing to do since he made me promise not to tell her.
It’s possible that the wife won’t know the approximate pre-owned value, nor would she now how to liquidate them for the best value.
If you are interested in the watches, perhaps you could offer her a sum that she would accept (let her come up with the price). Maybe you can pick them all up for $25k and also take them off her hands.
I had a relative do something similar. She was executor to an estate and there was a huge coin collection. She didn’t know what to do with it and she wasn’t about to have a thousands of coins individually appraised. She doesn’t even know how to contact a professional coin appraiser. So she ended up selling it to a collector for pennies on the dollar (no pun intended) just to get rid of them.