Hamza Masood is the Business Development Manager at WatchCharts.com, which has kindly allowed us to share their monthly Market Updates.

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This month’s Dispatch explores the changes in the market we’ve seen against the backdrop of new releases and discontinuations at Watches and Wonders 2023.

We also bring you our usual coverage of high level trends for our Overall Market Index and the Big Three brands: Rolex, Patek Philippe, and Audemars Piguet.

The Overall Market Index started off March with declines before ending the month strong as a result of interest created by Watches and Wonders. Overall, the Overall Market Index ended March flat, while our Rolex index gained 0.6%, our Patek Philippe index lost 1.3%, and our Audemars Piguet index lost 0.9%.  

A summary of the one-year performance of these four indexes is provided below.

WatchCharts Market Index April 2024

One Watch Stands Out from the Pack

While Audemars Piguet and Patek Philippe prices continue to decline at a relatively consistent rate over the past 6 months, our Rolex index shows a positive performance for the first month since the market downturn.

However, this is not necessarily indicative of a broad recovery of the Rolex market. In fact, in this instance a large portion of that positive movement can be attributed to a +12.5% increase in the last month in the secondary market value of the Rolex Cosmograph Daytona “John Mayer” ref. 116508, which has the fourth-highest weight in the Overall Market Index by transaction value.

This yellow gold Daytona, made famous by its association with John Mayer particularly with the green dial, was just discontinued by Rolex. While its current market price is around $72,000, many sellers are now asking upwards of six-figures for the green dial variant.

WatchCharts Market Index: Rolex Cosmograph Daytona “John Mayer” ref. 116508

Multiple eBay listings from reputable sellers have already sold for over $90,000 in the past week. (Note that when sellers increase prices rapidly as a result of discontinuations, our market price estimates will remain relatively conservative as our algorithm prioritizes sold listings. Learn more about our methodology here.)

The lack of a broader market upturn is also underscored by the one month performance of our Price Range Indexes; all of the price range indexes for watches over $5,000 are still showing a downward trend over the last 3 months.

Rolex Milgauss vs Air-King

Perhaps as a surprise to few, Rolex also discontinued the Milgauss reference 116400GV – a watch that had been in production since 2007 – alongside the new releases at Watches and Wonders. More importantly, Rolex discontinued the Milgauss collection entirely – a change in their approach compared to the Air-King 116900 last year, which was replaced by the 126900.

Comparing the discontinuation of the Milgauss ref. 116400GV in 2023 with the Air-King ref. 116900 in 2022 is interesting due to the similarities and differences of the circumstances. Both watches were stainless steel sports models, but relatively unpopular compared to the other Rolex Professional collections (GMT-Master II, Daytona, Submariner).

Over the years, we’ve heard many comments about these watches from collectors, with sentiments ranging from indifference to outright disgust.

However, while the 116900 Air-King was discontinued one year ago at the peak of the secondary watch market hype, the market conditions that set the backdrop for the discontinuation of the 116400GV Milgauss are much less favorable.

All else being equal, one might expect the Milgauss to be more desirable than the Air-King post-discontinuation, due to its more conventional design and a lack of a replacement model.

Yet, while Air-King 116900 prices increased by 39% between December 2021 and March 2022, we saw no such anticipation of the market leading up to the discontinuation of the Milgauss 116400GV. However, prices have climbed about 4.2% in the 10 days since the watch was discontinued.

* Hamza Masood is the Business Development Manager at WatchCharts.com. You can check out previous Market Updates at https://watchcharts.com/

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