Pre-2017 baseline: the secondary-market price for the most-demanded modern luxury watches sat at or slightly below retail. A steel Rolex Daytona ref. 116520 retailed at CHF 11,000 and traded at CHF 14,000-18,000 on the grey market; a Patek Nautilus 5711 retailed at CHF 21,000 and traded at CHF 25,000-30,000; an AP Royal Oak Jumbo 15202 retailed at CHF 21,000 and traded at CHF 22,000-28,000. Premiums existed (allocation-driven), but were modest relative to retail. The vintage market was a separate niche dominated by specialist auction houses and a small global collector network.
Three forces converged in 2016-2017 to break this baseline. (1) Online discovery and editorial: Hodinkee (founded 2008) and the broader online watch-content ecosystem reached cultural critical mass; the watch became a status object for non-traditional collector demographics (tech, finance, fashion). (2) Allocation-driven scarcity: Rolex, Patek, and AP boutique waitlists for steel sports watches stretched from months to years; the official supply curve flattened as production grew slowly while demand exploded. (3) Online secondary-market platforms: Chrono24 (founded 2003) reached scale; Hodinkee Shop, Phillips Online, and the Sotheby's/Christie's online auction infrastructure made cross-border watch purchases routine. The combination created a market where the only path to steel sports watches was the secondary at a premium.
"For about three years the watch behaved like a financial asset rather than a consumer object. Then it stopped, all at once."- Auction-house specialist on the 2022 peak
The 2017 inflection point was symbolised by Phillips New York's sale of Paul Newman's personal Daytona ref. 6239 for USD 17.8 million on 26 October 2017, the highest auction price ever paid for a wristwatch at the time. The Newman's sale was a genuine outlier (the watch had been gifted to Paul Newman by his wife Joanne Woodward, with intact provenance), but the headline number triggered a re-evaluation of the upper bound of the vintage market and seeded broader investor interest. Through 2018-2019 Daytona, Nautilus, and Royal Oak grey premiums grew steadily.
The 2020-2021 acceleration was the COVID-era acceleration. Cheap money (Fed funds rate at zero from March 2020), fiscal stimulus, crypto wealth (Bitcoin from $7k to $69k between Jan 2020 and Nov 2021), and shutdown of in-person retail drove buyers online and into alternative-asset positions. The Rolex Market Index (a composite tracker of secondary-market Rolex sport prices) roughly doubled between Jan 2020 and Apr 2022. The Patek Nautilus 5711 reached secondary-market prices of USD 240,000 in early 2022 against its CHF 30,000 retail. The Royal Oak Jumbo 15202 reached USD 200,000 against CHF 30,000 retail. Smaller references followed proportionally.
The peak was April 2022 by every major index. The WatchCharts Overall Watch Market Index peaked the week of 28 March 2022; the Rolex Market Index peaked the same week; Patek Philippe grey-market prices peaked the same week. Three events bracketed the peak: (1) the 2 November 2021 Phillips New York sale at which the Tiffany & Co. Nautilus 5711/1A-018 sold for USD 6.5 million for charity; (2) the 5 January 2021 announcement by Thierry Stern discontinuing the steel 5711, which created a brief grey-market price surge; (3) the March-April 2022 crypto market drawdown that began removing the marginal speculative buyer from the market.
The 2022-2023 correction was sharp. By year-end 2023 the Rolex Market Index had fallen approximately 30% from peak; the Patek index had fallen approximately 40-50%; the AP index approximately 35-45%. By mid-2024 the Daytona ceramic-bezel was trading at roughly CHF 35-40k against its CHF 14,800 retail (down from a CHF 65k+ peak); the Nautilus 5711 was trading at roughly CHF 130-150k (down from CHF 240k peak). Index levels remain significantly above pre-2017 baselines (the Rolex Market Index in late 2024 was roughly 1.7-1.9× the January 2017 level), but the speculative premium-to-retail ratio at the peak has compressed substantially. Whether the post-2022 levels represent a new structural baseline or further correction is the central debate in the modern watch market.