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From finance executives and Silicon Valley elites, to actors and athletes, luxury watches have long been sported by the upper echelon as indicators of wealth and class.
The “Sage of Omaha,” billionaire Warren Buffett, wears a gold Rolex Day-Date, retailing around $17,000. Actor Keanu Reeves gifted the stuntmen who worked with him on the film John Wick: Chapter 4 with custom Rolex Submariners, each likely costing upwards of $10,000. NBA star LeBron James keeps an extensive watch collection, which features models from Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet, and more.
But prices for expensive Swiss watches like Rolex, Patek Phillippe, and Audemars Piguet are approaching a two-year low on secondary markets, according to the Bloomberg Subdial Watch Index. The index, which tracks the 50 most-traded pre-owned luxury watches by average price, is down nearly 18% in the past 12 months and down 11% in the last 24 months after reaching record highs in early 2022 during the pandemic spending surge.
For instance, the Royal Oak Jumbo Ultra Thin model by Audemars Piguet is down 49% in the last 17 months, according to Subdial. A pre-owned model, which was valued at $138,000 in February 2022, now costs less than $70,000.
The falling demand for luxury watches is largely due to rising interest rates and consumer spending on discretionary items, like electronics, furniture, and apparel, slowing.
Partly because of buyers trying to save money, the prices of some mid-tier priced luxury watches, including models from Omega and Cartier, are rising, outperforming the high-end Swiss models. Many buyers are looking for “rare undervalued timepieces and, in some cases, smaller-sized watches,” Bloomberg reported.
Billionaire Jeff Bezos was spotted wearing a custom Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch, which retails around $7,000, on his flight to space in 2021. Earlier this month, Omega raised its prices by 8% in the U.S. and by 2% in Switzerland and China, Bloomberg reported, citing a Morgan Stanley analyst report.
Popping the luxury watch bubble
Luxury watches weren’t the only products that were hot sellers during the pandemic years that have since cooled. They were part of a larger “everything bubble” that popped in 2022.
Such a bubble occurs when interest rates are lowered to near zero and the central banks, like the Federal Reserve, use a strategy called quantitative easing to lower rates and try to boost consumer spending with “easy money.” From 2020 to 2022, low rates pushed investors towards riskier investments, allowed unsustainable business models to succeed on cheap loans, and fueled the pandemic housing boom.
During the pandemic, some of the ultrawealthy spent lavishly, including on a $31.8 million T-rex skeleton and a $1.9 million racing pigeon. People also spent millions on vintage trading cards and collectibles, the hype around cryptocurrency reignited (particularly for Bitcoin), and the luxury retail market exploded, with jewelry, handbags, and watches skyrocketing in value.
Take the Nautilus Travel Time model by Patek Philippe, for example. Pre-owned models were valued at $272,000 in March 2022, according to the Subdial index. Today they cost $126,000, less than half of its value during the pandemic.
Now, due to slowing consumer spending on luxury products, Swiss watchmakers are left with a classic supply and demand problem—too many watches and too few people who want to buy them.
“I see in the past two months, the market is a little bit slower than before,” Thierry Stern, president of Patek Philippe, told Bloomberg in April.
“I don’t say that it’s very bad—not at all. But I just see that it’s slowing down,” Stern added.
