Thursday, June 17, 2021

Shall we go for New or neo-Vintage Rolex under such market changes of 2021

We have seen that there is a big change in Rolex market price in these few years.

I briefly categories them into new watches, neo-vintage and vintage watch here.

New watches are those made between 2010-2021

Neo-vintage are this made 1989-2010

Vintage watches are those made between 1988 or before.  (T <25 lume dial)

Vintage Rolex was enjoying a good days in price appreciation mainly in these years 2014-2019, as we can see price of GMT master 1675 and or Sea Dweller, 1665  was rising up 50% in these 5 year’s time and become flat after 2019 and even experienced price drop slightly in end of 2020 till now.

Rolex did announced in a form of internal memo they would stop offering free authentication service for vintage watches on 6 Dec 2020.

With this announcement, many new vintage collectors would hesitate in buying vintage Rolex as there is no way to tell his watch is made with correct period of the parts with the watch such as dial, hands, bezel and bracelet.

This will immediately created an impact to the dealer, shops as buyers are scary of the completeness of the vintage watch, so business of vintage watches dropped significantly. And those buyers or collectors would like to consider buying newer Rolex, so the new watches market would expand a lot.

Some of the private collectors would like to sell out some of his collection and switches buying new watches.

What is the best model vintage Rolex collectors would consider to buy as new watches, Daytona… so Daytona price kept going up. 

A Rolex Yellow gold Daytona 16618 was $150,000 in May 2020, and the same watch is now $230,000  (up 53%)

A White gold Daytona 116519 with black dial was $223,000 in 2019 and this is now $320,000!

You can see Daytona 116500LN white was $190,000 as an average in 2020, and was going to peak highest $320,000 on April 2021 as many of us speculated that it would be discontinued after April 2021.

After Watches and Wonders had no news of discontinuing on Daytona 1165100LN white on 7 April 2021, the price get softened and dropped from $300,000 down to $270,000 in one week, thence stabilized at the range of $260000-268,000 in these two months till now.

There used to have small number of dishonest dealer, shops and or individual fb sellers are killing the market by introduction of some of the frankenWatch to sell. So they kill the markets as no one is able to tell them officically thse are good stuff or Frankenwatches… there are still some individual expert or private company would guarantee the authentication of Rolex watches. However, no one would be more authorized as Rolex could do in the market.

More people is amazed by the new Rolex watches in these two years, and their price are keep going up. Mainly because they are more wearable comparing with Vintage Rolex.

What do you do with your cash for watches? likely buying newer watches of neo-vintage Rolex (1999-2010).

If you want to buy for daily uses as a me-too Rolex, go for new one.

If you want to buy certain watches as for investment or for your collection, get those neo-vintage, they are less complicated to choose and more repairable and wearable than those vintage Rolex. And they are more commonly been recognized as authenticated as more documented sources is available for your to learn and study about them.

So how about your treasure of Daytona 6263, Double RED 1665 Singapore Red 1680? Well, keep them and wait for next cycle to come… no one knows when may be two years or four or 8 years.

HK Snob

Units here is HKD (Hong Kong Dollars)

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