We Don't Own Any Hyped Watches

It’s funny… I was looking back over the last few years of crazy hype in the watch industry and realized that neither my wife nor I owned any of the hyped watches. Now if you were to rewind the clock by about 15 years, we would probably own the most hyped watches.

Starting during the pandemic four watch brands really took off. The brands were Rolex, Richard Mille, Patek Philippe and Audemars Piguet. Basically the pandemic led to a supply and demand issue, while also seeing more households having much more disposable cash. During this time we were also buying and selling our personal houses, and being in the Austin area really saw the crazy swings of the market.

Besides Richard Mille, the four brands listed above didn’t really see all models in their catalogs explode in price. For the most part you had the Royal Oak line from Audemars Piguet, GMT / Submariner / Daytona models from Rolex and the Nautilus range from Patek Philippe explode.



I’m sure there were some genuine collectors that were interested in the lines from the above brands, but for the most part this was new interest. Prior to the pandemic, most of these watches were available at or below retail minus stainless steel Daytonas and harder to find Richard Milles.

There are a few reasons for this newfound interest. Earlier on in the boom the majority of the interest was fueled by people flush with cash looking for the latest and greatest in watches. This was fueled by social media posts, influencer videos and what was being worn and talked about by celebrities both in and outside of the watch world. A watch was the next best thing to showing wealth after a high end luxury sedan or sports car.

After the boom had started and prices were shown to be on a steady rise, next came the investors and speculators. This also encompassed all the new watch dealers and flippers as well. It was now common knowledge that if you were able to acquire any of these four brands popular models at or near retail, that within minutes you could sell them for two, three or four times their retail price.

These factors just kept driving up prices on the aftermarket. During this time dealers were also flipping these watches back and forth to each other, just making the prices even higher. I’m sorry, but a $15,000 Rolex Daytona has no business being a $50,000 watch. At some point this bubble just had to burst. People with that amount of disposable income are smart enough to realize the value of these watches was nowhere near what they were paying for them. Also as with the current real estate market, the general trend in the market was cooling.



Having been in the industry for nearly 20 years, I have never seen anything like the fever created by this watch boom. Sure I had seen some very limited and hard to find models fetch two maybe three times their retail prices, but remember these were made in extremely limited quantities. Rolex sports models are not limited by any means of the imagination, they are for the most part mass produced. Also seeing people invest in watches was just insane. I would love the watch world to work in such a manner that I could dump all of our savings into watches and know that I could wear and enjoy these and at the end of the day I could sell them off at a profit. That kind of thinking is just fantasy, and at the end of the day it’s playing out as a harsh reality for some.

Personal preference and income also play into some of my views with the hyped up watches as well. My personal experience with Richard Mille was when the brand first launched. I spent some time wearing their RM05 in the mid 2000s and found the watch to be too small for my 7.25 inch wrist. At the time the watch was going for well under retail, but even at those prices I wasn’t a huge fan. I haven’t really spent much time with the newer and larger models, but spending six figures on a single watch is still hard for me to understand, even owning various five figure watches.



As for Patek Philippe, the watches just never sung to me personally. I always felt the Nautilus and especially the Aquanaut lines were just too delicate for me. I felt the cases were far too thin and the design never appealed to me like the Royal Oaks and especially the Royal Oak Offshores did. I do love the brand and feel they are definitely one of the top watch manufactures in the world. I feel my heart lines with their complications though. I prefer their standard round shaped watches to their sports models. Also, their complications are where you start seeing some larger sized and thicker watches. Once again, these complicated Pateks carry price tags that I personally wouldn’t / couldn’t / shouldn't spend on a single watch.



For Rolex, I personally have never been the biggest fan of the brand. This was probably more of a nurture thing for me. My real introduction to watches was in the very early 2000s and my interest laid in divers watches. Naturally the Submariner was biggest influence in the design of dive watches, but as a college student was far out of my reach financially. Back then, the next step down from a Submariner was an Omega Seamaster. If I remember correctly, Seamasters could be had for about one third to half of the price of a Submariner. My first two watches ended up being Seamasters, so I was kind of on that side of fandom.

As I got more into watches and really started to learn about all the brands and complications, Rolex kept getting lower and lower on my list of favorite brands. For Rolex money, you could get a much more complicated watch from a more established brand. Also being in Texas, every upper middle class dad wore a Rolex, which really made it less enticing to me. It’s the same sort of reason I don’t care for Tesla, living in Austin, literally every third car you see is a Tesla… it just seems super boring to me.



My wife on the other hand does appreciate Rolex, and about a year ago she decided that she would like one. This was right during the watch boom and I thought we might be in for a rude awakening when looking for a Rolex price wise. She really doesn’t care for smaller watches, so it was looking like it was going to be a 40 mm sports model. She didn’t really care for the case design of the Submariner, Explorer II or GMT Master II, saying they were a bit too masculine. What she did end up picking was the 40 mm steel and platinum Yacht-master 16622. Its case had softer lines like the Daytona and she loved the platinum bezel and dial. The Yacht-master was actually developed to be the replacement to the Submariner, but Rolex decided to not kill off such an iconic line and debuted the Yacht-master as a standalone model. Personally I find the Yacht-master to be a much more interesting watch to the Submariner and love the use of such a high end metal as platinum in conjunction with stainless steel. One thing that really surprised me was the price of the Yacht-master. Even though the Yacht-master carried a much higher retail price when released than a same year Submariner, it was half the price on the pre-owned market. This made it a no brainer, and we soon found a great full set 16622 Yacht-master for my wife. Currently the values of Submariners has dropped so much, that they are now at or below Yacht-master prices. This just shows how buying non-hyped watches can work out better in the long run.

Besides the older Yacht-masters, the only watches I find somewhat interesting from Rolex are the two titanium cased watches recently released. While titanium is my favorite material for a watch case, Rolex has really been behind the curve when it came to the metal. The first watch they released in titanium that I found interesting was the Deepsea Challenge. This 50 mm watch is now currently the deepest diving watch available from a top watch manufacture, being certified to 11,000 meters of water resistance, nearly twice as deep as the new Ultra Deep from Omega and almost 3 times as deep as my King Power Oceanographic from Hublot. See… interesting watch Rolex! Needless to say, since I like it, it was not one of the hyped up Rolex models during the boom. The other watch I do like from Rolex is the new titanium Yacht-master. This is just a clean looking watch, but really reminds me of how my IWC GST Aquatimer 2000 in titanium looks. The titanium Yacht-master did get hyped up and saw a huge price increase in the aftermarket. I do believe this to be due to the fact that Rolex really didn’t release many of them. I’m not sure if it’s on purpose or just a supply issue, but you never see an in hand titanium Yacht-master for sale.



Finally let’s take a look at Audemars Piguet. AP has always been and still is one of my two favorite watch brands along with IWC. Currently Audemars Piguet has four core watch lines, the Code 11.59, Royal Oak, Royal Oak Offshore and Royal Oak Concept. My favorite among the four are the Offshores. Up until recently the Offshores were really the only sought after models, especially since Audemars Piguet did such a great job with their limited edition Offshores, which along with the Big Pilots are my favorite series of watches. These were really the only APs that sold over retail as well. I always loved the Concepts, but they were so out of my price range, I just admired them from afar. The Code 11.59s are very nice looking watches, but just a little dressier than I personally prefer. I feel the Code line is also still trying to find its feet, which I’m sure it will in time.

Although the Royal Oak was the design that started it all, up until recently they weren’t the best sellers. Years ago, every current model Royal Oak was available under retail. I can’t really pinpoint why the Royal Oak took off so hard, but I’m guessing it had something to do with the new trend that smaller is better. I have handled pretty much every hyped up Royal Oak from the past few years, and even the gem set and openwork models just don’t do it for me, especially not at their aftermarket prices. I’m good with a regular old at or below retail Offshore over here, which is why the only Audemars Piguet we own is an older limited edition Offshore Montoya... i.e. BEST WATCH EVER!

If you look at current trends, we actually only personally own non-hyped watches. This includes an Offsore in the Montoya, two globally hated Hublots (King Power Oceanographic / Big Bang All Black 41mm), Yacht-master 16622 and an oversized IWC Big Pilot Top Gun Perpetual Calendar. That’s actually fine with us, since it just means the watches never went up in price and in most cases could be had far under retail. We can also with reasonable faith predict their future values as well.



Full disclosure, we obviously sell watches. We really don’t have much interest in selling the hyped up watches though. There is just way too much competition in that market and it’s far too volatile. We just really try to sell what we like. Also if you look at models we sell like Big Pilots, Big Bangs, Luminors, etc… their values have pretty much been flat lined for years and didn’t budge during the watch boom. Dealing with watches like these just makes more sense to me since they’re easy to predict. You know what they sold for a year ago, what they go for now and probably have a great idea of what they’ll go for in a year or two. Sure it’s harder and takes more time to sell watches like these, but at the end of the day they are much more predictable… plus we actually like them and are excited to see them when they arrive.