After the Watch Boom: What the Secondary Market Taught Collectors

For a stretch of the early 2020s, a handful of steel sports watches traded on the secondary market for multiples of their retail price. Waiting lists at authorised dealers stretched into years, and a new class of buyer treated the watches as assets that could only go up. Then, from the spring of 2022, secondary prices for the most traded references fell sharply and spent the following years working off much of the gain.

Scarcity that someone controls

The boom rested on a supply that the manufacturers, not the market, decide. When a maker chooses how many pieces to produce and which customers receive them, the retail price and the market price can drift far apart. That gap is not a yield. It is the spread between a rationed allocation and open demand, and it closes when demand cools or supply loosens.

The brands have since moved closer to the secondary market themselves. Rolex launched a certified pre owned programme at the end of 2022 and in 2023 agreed to buy Bucherer, one of its largest retailers. When the maker starts to participate in resale, the independent dealer's edge narrows and the price a collector can expect becomes easier to read.

What held value

The pieces that came through the correction best tended to share three traits: genuine rarity rather than rationed supply, complete provenance with box and papers, and condition that had not been compromised by over polishing or replacement parts. The references that had run furthest on speculation gave back the most.

What it means for capital

For someone allocating capital, a fine watch is best treated as a pleasure that can hold its value, not as a trade. Buy what you would wear, buy the best example you can and keep the paperwork. Expect a meaningful spread between what a dealer will pay and what a dealer will charge, and expect it to widen in a soft market. The collectors who did well in the boom and the bust alike were the ones who never needed to sell.