WatchCharts May 2024 Watch Market Update: Rolex Secondary Prices Still Declining
by Hamza Masood
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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With Watches & Wonders and the associated speculation around discontinuations and new releases firmly in the rearview mirror, the secondary watch market in April 2024 has continued to follow the longer term trend of decline.
In this report, we summarize the high level trends from last month, give an update on the Rolex Pepsi, and cover some of the best and worst performing collections in April.
After a Brief Respite, the Market Decline Continues
In April, we saw a -0.4% decline in the WatchCharts Overall Market Index, compared to a -0.2% loss in March. The decline in Rolex prices in April also increased month over month, from -0.6% in March to -1.6% in April. Patek Philippe prices dropped -0.1% while Audemars Piguet prices declined by half a percent after experiencing a brief increase in March.
While the rate of secondary market decline has slowed down since around November of last year, the WatchCharts Overall Market Index and Big Three brand indexes shown in the charts above all reached new lows in March/April since the watch market downturn began two years ago.
April 2024 Performance of Key Secondary Market Brands
We saw a particularly large decline for Rolex last month, as Pepsi discontinuation rumors proved to be false and the brand’s 2024 releases were generally considered to be underwhelming.
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A Post-Watches & Wonders Update on the Rolex GMT-Master II Pepsi
In our March update, we commented on the diverging performance of the Rolex GMT-Master II ref. 126710BLRO Pepsi from the GMT-Master II Collection Index as a whole due to rumors of its discontinuation.
We also saw a notable decrease in Pespi secondary market supply between November 2023 and February 2024. However, Rolex had nothing to say about this reference at Watches & Wonders and it remains in production.
We first examined the impact of the continued production of the Pepsi reference on our YouTube channel, detailing the evolution of the price and supply metrics in a video here. It has been a couple of weeks since that video was published, and we can give an even more current view on the data.
While the price of the Rolex Pepsi 126710BLRO is still up 1.6% over the past year, prices have fallen 3.2% in the past month (compared to -1.4% for the GMT-Master II market index).
Watch brands inventory levels
Furthermore, we now see inventory levels at a one-year high, a clear shift from the trend between November and February.
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The Best and Worst Performing Collections in March
Some of the best and worst performing collections for the month are included in the table below.
The MoonSwatch collection is a surprising highlight as one of the best performing collections of the month, as the collection has frequently ranked among the worst performers in past months.
However, it is important to remember that with an index value of approximately $300, a 2% increase in MoonSwatch prices represents a price fluctuation of less than $10.
| Brand | Collection | April Delta % |
| Breitling | Superocean Heritage | +2.9% |
| Swatch | MoonSwatch | +2.0% |
| Omega | Constellation | +1.9% |
| Audemars Piguet | Royal Oak Offshore | -2.3% |
| Breitling | Navitimer | -2.6% |
| Audemars Piguet | CODE 11.59 | -4.4% |
The secondary watch market peaked just over two years ago, and some of the biggest hype watches have seen the steepest declines in market value since then. We take a detailed look at the list of biggest losers in our latest YouTube video.
* Hamza Masood is the Business Development Manager at WatchCharts.com. You can check out previous Market Updates at https://watchcharts.com/articles/category/dispatch
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