MY TRIBE

MY TRIBE buys, authenticates and resells pre-owned fine jewellery and watches under its own name and at its own price, rather than hosting other people's listings or running an auction. It is registered as MY TRIBE Sàrl at Route de la Versoix 2C, 1299 Crans, a small commune in canton Vaud, and the company itself describes its base as the Geneva region. If you are shopping from Zürich, that means the relationship runs almost entirely online: MY TRIBE holds no branch in German-speaking Switzerland, and the only in-person option is a try-on appointment by request at partner boutiques in Geneva, Nyon or Lausanne. That is a real limit worth naming up front, and it is also the only significant one, since almost everything else about the shop is built to work for a buyer who never sets foot in Romandy.

The site itself runs in German, French and English, with a full English mirror at en.my-tribe.ch rather than a machine-translated afterthought, which matters directly for a reader who has not yet built up working French or German. Delivery is free and insured to any address in Switzerland, Zürich included, and MY TRIBE dispatches a purchase within three business days by registered mail. Above CHF 1,500, the parcel travels with Swiss Post's added insurance service, and above CHF 5,000 delivery is arranged through a private courier instead, with MY TRIBE's own insurance covering the transit either way. What the site does not do is ship outside Switzerland: it states plainly that deliveries go only within the country, so a buyer planning to leave Switzerland in a few years and take a piece home should expect to arrange their own onward shipping and any customs paperwork, since MY TRIBE will not handle either.

The catalogue leans specifically into vintage and estate stock, which is what earns it a place in this category rather than among the general retailers. The site says its collection traces more than 100 years of jewellery history, and browsing it turns up Art Deco settings, "Toi et Moi" pairs and pieces from past decades alongside newer designer stock. Named houses in the jewellery range include Cartier, Bulgari, Chopard, Pomellato, Messika, Dinh Van, Gilbert Albert, Bucherer and Ole Lynggaard, and a separate women's watch section carries pre-owned pieces signed by Rolex, Piaget, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Blancpain and Cartier again. That last point is worth flagging precisely: the watch offering is for women's pieces specifically, so a reader hunting a pre-owned men's watch to pair with an engagement purchase will not find one here.

What you get

Jewellery is organised by piece type, rings, bracelets, necklaces, earrings, pendants and brooches, and again by a set of themed collections the site calls "univers": Art Deco, coloured stones, designer pieces, a diamond-pavé line it brands Diamond Crush, an engagement collection, an exceptional-pieces tier, an "iconic" grouping and a small-price-tag selection for smaller budgets. For a reader specifically after an engagement ring, that dedicated engagement collection is a genuine convenience: rather than filtering a general ring page by hand, it groups solitaires, coloured-stone alternatives set with sapphires, rubies and moonstones, and Art Deco styles in one place, in white gold, yellow gold, rose gold and platinum. On the page we read, prices across that collection ran from CHF 380 up to CHF 4,150, which puts a genuine pre-owned vintage ring within reach of a far smaller budget than a comparable new stone from a maison on Bahnhofstrasse, alongside pieces priced well into four figures for a more substantial stone or a recognised design.

Every piece, whichever collection it sits in, goes through the same check before it is listed: cleaned, inspected and authenticated in-house before it reaches the site. A named specialist covers each side of the catalogue, a certified gemmologist evaluates the stones and settings, and a master watchmaker based at Alliance Genève authenticates every watch. That is a genuine, named check, and it is more scrutiny than a lot of casual secondhand sellers offer, but it is still an in-house process rather than an independent third-party grading report, so a buyer who wants a separate outside appraisal before a larger purchase should plan to arrange it themselves rather than assume the site's own authentication substitutes for one.

How the transaction works

Payment runs through Visa or Mastercard, TWINT or PostFinance, and the homepage also advertises paying in three or four instalments or buying on invoice, so a large purchase does not have to be settled in one transfer. Returns run on a 5-day window from the day a piece arrives: send an unworn item back in its original packaging within that period, after filling in a return form explaining why, and MY TRIBE frames this as a full money-back guarantee rather than a store credit or exchange-only policy. One detail we could not pin down cleanly enough to state here: MY TRIBE's own pages disagree on who covers the cost of posting a return, so rather than print a term the site itself contradicts, this write-up leaves it open. Ask before you order if that would change your decision.

The reverse process is also worth knowing about, since this category is as much about selling a previous-life piece as buying one. Send photos of a piece you own, and MY TRIBE returns a price estimate within three business days. If you accept, the piece is collected, authenticated, photographed and listed for sale for up to 180 days, and once it sells you receive roughly 75% of the sale price within 15 business days, once the buyer's own return window has closed. Pulling a piece back out before the 180 days are up costs a CHF 100 administrative fee. That is a consignment arrangement rather than an instant buyout, and it is useful context even for a pure buyer, since it means the vintage stock on the site was sourced piece by piece from Swiss owners rather than bought in bulk from a trade supplier.

Who runs it, and how it compares

MY TRIBE is a small, named operation rather than an anonymous storefront: co-founders Anne-Marie Kortmoeller and Mélissa Tamisier built the business, later joined by Stelline Privé Dubault, alongside the gemmologist and watchmaker who authenticate the stock. The company frames the whole model around sustainability, stating its aim as being to energise the second-hand jewellery market in Switzerland by prioritising resources that already exist rather than newly mined stones and freshly cast gold, and that framing runs through the site's copy rather than sitting in a single "about" paragraph.

Against a Bahnhofstrasse house with its own estate corner, MY TRIBE is the more specialised option: everything on it is secondhand, there is no new-stock line to default to if the vintage selection does not have what you want, and the buying experience is built for someone comfortable choosing from photographs rather than a shop window. Against a pure online marketplace where many independent sellers each set their own price, it is the more accountable one: one company authenticates every piece, sets one price, and stands behind the sale with its own return policy, rather than a buyer negotiating separately with whoever happened to list a similar ring that week.

Verdict

For an expat in Zürich who is comfortable buying jewellery from photographs, reassured by a five-day, full-refund return window, and not fussed about seeing a ring in person before paying, MY TRIBE is a straightforward way to reach a genuinely large pool of pre-owned and vintage engagement rings, priced from well under a thousand francs upward, served in English, with free insured delivery anywhere in the country. The catches are minor rather than disqualifying: no showroom in Zürich or anywhere German-speaking, no shipping once you leave Switzerland, and an authentication process that is thorough but in-house rather than independently graded. None of that is a reason to skip it, but each is worth weighing before you commit, particularly if you expect to take the ring abroad again in a few years.