There’s Finally Some Good News if You Want to Buy a Rolex

For years now, the narrative around buying a Rolex watch has gone something like this: They’re impossible to buy new from an authorized dealer and their prices are massively inflated on the secondary market. But that may be changing.

Buying your dream Rolex, let alone getting a halfway decent deal on it, has been a herculean task for basically the past decade. But the latest data suggest that the market is starting to ease for those wanting to do just that. (Something I predicted earlier this year.)

Not only is the brand itself massively scaling up production to meet insatiable demand, as I’ve discussed previously here, but the red-hot secondary market has cooled down considerably in recent months, suggesting the Rolex bubble has finally burst.

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Rolex Prices Are Falling

A new report from Morgan Stanley — the same financial services firm that publishes the most cited annual ranking of Swiss watch brand sales — shows that the used watch market, which reached its red-hot pandemic-fueled peak in the first quarter of 2022, continues to steadily trend downward.

But what’s most interesting about this new analysis, as pointed out by Yahoo! Finance’s reporting, is that Rolex — which had long appeared immune from larger watch market trends — is starting to show big declines, too.

First things first, the report is partly based on the WatchCharts Overall Market Index which tracks 60 popular watches across 10 Swiss brands on the used market. It found that prices on the secondary market fell overall by 2.1 percent in Q2 2024 compared to the previous quarter, and fell year over year by 1.2 percent. This represents the ninth quarter in a row in which prices have fallen.

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The report also examined more brands in the broader picture of the Swiss watch industry to find out how they performed in the last quarter. Surprisingly, a couple of brands bucked the larger downward trend and actually saw prices increase on the secondary market, with the largest gains going to more affordable brands like Montblanc (+2.4 percent) and Hamilton (+2.2 percent).

On the other side of the coin, very high-end brands fared the worst, with the “Holy Trinity” of Swiss watchmakers putting up the three worst numbers. Patek Philippe watches dropped 10.7 percent in value, Audemars Piguet saw a 12.5 percent reduction and Vacheron Constantin fell a whopping 15.3 percent.

Rolex finds itself smack dab in the middle of all of this, with its watches’ prices dropping 7.2 percent last quarter on the secondary market. While not as bad as its higher-end brethren, that’s still a bigger drop than those suffered by sports watch rivals Omega (6.9 percent) and Breitling (5.9 percent).

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Why Are Rolex Prices Dropping?

So what’s behind the trend of used Rolex prices finally coming down to Earth? The report posits that it’s largely driven by an increase in the supply of available new watches at Rolex boutiques and authorized dealers.

Morgan Stanley formed this conclusion based on two factors. One is a reduction in Rolex models available on the gray market, which suggests that fewer flippers have been buying Rolexes at retail to then sell them for profit. The report theorizes this is due to the rising prices of Rolex’s SRPs, which shrink the profit margins for flippers.

Somewhat more dubiously, the report also states that waitlist times have fallen for some of Rolex’s most popular sports models: the GMT-Master II, Submariner and Explorer. This data is more anecdotal, as it comes from people self-reporting their wait times on Reddit. Still, it does show that wait times for all three models have fallen year over year, suggesting more available stock across the board.

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One factor that the report does not discuss, however, is the role Rolex’s recent moves on the secondary market may be playing in orchestrating the falling prices of its watches.

The Crown imported its new certified pre-owned (CPO) program to the U.S. early last year, and near the end of the year, Rolex outright purchased its largest retail partner, Bucherer. While Rolex insists its dealers still have autonomy when it comes to pricing used watches, both of these moves indicate the brand exerting some control over how high those prices can go — whether that influence is direct or indirect.

In other words, if an authorized dealer wants to stay on Rolex’s good side, they’re not going to price gouge the brand’s models if they know Rolex has a certain price they want to stay below. So with Rolex’s shadow looming larger than over its retail partners, the brand may be indirectly dictating its own secondhand market prices.

Is Now the Time to Buy a Rolex?

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The facts as they stand now are that new Rolex watches are increasing in price and becoming easier to buy from authorized dealers, while used Rolexes and new models from gray-market flippers — which have long been vastly overpriced — are decreasing in price.

The answer, I think, is twofold. First, now is probably a pretty good time to buy a new Rolex. If you’re in the market for a new watch, I’d suggest acting now, as SRPs will surely continue to climb even as production ramps up in the coming years. This is just part of Rolex’s and the overall Swiss watch industry’s strategy to continue to move upmarket where the most gains are to be made.

Alternatively, if you’re more interested in a used watch, I’d suggest waiting a bit longer. With prices on the secondary market falling for two straight years but Rolex just now starting to really see some of these big decreases, I believe that we’ll continue to see used Rolex prices fall for the next several months or even years. So if you’re patient, you’ll probably end up saving a chunk of money on your desired Rolex.

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