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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In our previous update, we reported the continuation of the decline of the WatchCharts Overall Market Index as well as the market indexes for the Big Three brands. In October, the story remained more of the same: Overall Market Index fell 1.1% in the calendar month.

This represents a slight slowdown in the pace of decline compared to the previous two months, which themselves saw market declines accelerate compared to earlier in the year.

Rolex Index Outpaced By Inflation Over The Last Three Years

With the Overall Market Index now at a two-and-a-half year low, the broad-based nature of the declines across the market continues: Rolex prices are now also at a 30-month low, while Patek Philippe has hit a 26-month low, and Audemars Piguet is at a 27-month low.

Watchcharts watch market update November 2024

In October, our Patek Philippe Market Index dropped 1.4%, while our Rolex Market Index declined by 0.8%, and our Audemars Piguet Market Index lost 0.7%. The Patek Philippe index performed relatively better than last month, when it was the worst performing index over the past month of all the brands for which we publish index values; this month its decline is exceeded by Swatch (-5%), Girard-Perregaux (-2%), Tudor (-1.7%) and IWC (-1.7%).

The only brand indexes to appreciate more than 0.5% in the previous month have index values under 3,000 and therefore have very limited impact on the overall state of the market; only four brand indexes with values over 3,000 appreciated between 0% and 0.5%, essentially flat. All 30 remaining brand indexes declined in October.

The Rolex index is now up only a shade over 10% in the last three years, which means its performance now lags inflation in the United States over a similar time period.

When Will Rolex Prices Stop Falling?

The question of when prices will stabilize/recover is easily one of the most common questions we get asked. Collectors and enthusiasts want to time their purchases for the bottom of the market, and more generally there is interest in knowing when the market might return to a more healthy place.

We take a detailed look at what the data has to say about how we got here, and what might have to change before prices recover, in this video above.

MoonSwatch Returns to Earth

Of all the brands for which we publish indexes, the worst performing index in October was for Swatch, which declined 5%. This was driven almost entirely by declines in the MoonSwatch collection: the Mission to Neptune in particular shed over 29% of its value in October, while the MoonSwatch index (tracking the value of all 11 editions available at launch in 2022) declined 5% last month.

It appears that due to a combination of the launch of the Blancpain X Swatch Fifty Fathoms, as well as the hype shifting to the monthly Moonshine launches, the air gone out of the original 11 versions of the MoonSwatch and most versions barely trade above their retail price of $270.

* Hamza Masood is the Business Development Manager at WatchCharts.com. You can check out previous Market Updates at https://watchcharts.com/articles/category/dispatch and there are more market insights and analysis on their YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/watchcharts

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