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How hard is it to get the rolex you want

Bren_C

Hi All,

I've a birthday of significance coming up in 18 months and have decided to treat myself with a rolex, I had decided on the new air king but as the work bonus went well I can go for a GMT. Had resigned myself (if you can call it that) to the blue one as Pepsi was only in white gold but see now that they have a steel version with a jubilee strap. They seem to be selling for mad money 20k on chrono 24 etc. and none if the irish jewllers can shed any light, so what my best bet at getting one from a retailer at close to RRP? I'm in Switzerland 2/3 times a year for work so is that an option......

B

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Time

theheavyhitter wrote: »

Thank you for the information, and the link. To be honest with you, I had never heard of Guardian Of Time.
I would prefer to deal with Lunnes, due to having built a relationship with them over the years. I have always found their customer service to be excellent. So is it worth paying more for? Maybe not for others, but for me personally, yes it is.
A 1600 Euro saving on the Irish retail at Weirs is good enough for my liking.
The thing is, sometimes its worth dealing with someone you trust and have had excellent previous experiences with; rather than taking a chance, and then having a negative one.
I suppose what I am saying is this, with heavy hitter pieces I prefer to take no chances whatsoever.

That’s fair enough, there’s loads of specialist resellers out there who in reality have more knowledge than ADs do, so personally I don’t mind going that route but it’s a big outlay so you should go the Lunnes route if it suits you better. But do ask for a discount, even go to weirs and see what discount they’ll offer and ask Lunnes to match, you’ve nothing to lose at least doing that

Oafley Jones

theheavyhitter wrote: »

Speculators are far from fools. Even buying at premium on the grey market; a Hulk/Pepsi/Daytona is a good investment. 30%+ profit margin within 2-5 years etc. What other investment gives that level of return so quickly, and so risk free?

I think this is terrible advice. All it takes is for Rolex to open the taps supply wise (and rumours are they’re doing it), and a recession (look at China atm, plus how much luxury goods they currently consume) and you’re Fawked.

Cienciano

Yep, nothing is "risk free". Have people forgotten about the last recession already?

theheavyhitter

Oafley Jones wrote: »

I think this is terrible advice. All it takes is for Rolex to open the taps supply wise (and rumours are they’re doing it), and a recession (look at China atm, plus how much luxury goods they currently consume) and you’re Fawked.

I consider buying steel sports pieces such as; Hulk, Batman, Pepsi, Daytona, to be excellent advice. Historically steel sports pieces rocket in value post discontinuation. For example the Kermit's value has risen year on year post discontinuation. I have no reason to believe that the same won't be the case for the Hulk etc. Rolex produces 800K pieces per annum. This is known as fact, due to the Swiss chronometer certification. I do not believe rumour that they would increase production past 800K per annum. It suits their business model to have long waiting lists on steel sports pieces, rather than over supply during recession that you speak of.
Say one purchased a Batman pre-Baselword on the grey market for 10K, today its worth 14K+ etc. That is even buying on the grey market at a premium rather that retail. But say one bought it speculatively at retail for 7K, then that is 7K to 14K increase. I do not consider that terrible advice at all, I consider it excellent speculation.
The reality is this, buying a steel sports Rolex piece is a good investment.

theheavyhitter

Cienciano wrote: »

Yep, nothing is "risk free". Have people forgotten about the last recession already?

I wore a Submariner during the Celtic Tiger boom. I wore a Submariner during the recession. I am wearing a Submariner now.
The recession didn't really affect me at all, so it wasn't a case of forgetting it; as my life wasn't really different before, during, and presently.
With regards to nothing is risk free, if one wants to gain in life, one has to take some risk.
The other option is to play it safe, take no risks; but then never gain. That's the deal.

Oafley Jones

theheavyhitter wrote: »

The other option is to play it safe, take no risks; but then never gain. That's the deal.

You’re talking about watches here ... And in my experience anyone who speaks as definitely on “investments” is best ignored. Your own examples should set off alarm bells. The kermit was discontinued less than ten years ago, is an actual limited production Rolex all just preceding a bubble. The flat fours were the only ones trading at a premium before the true mania took hold.

theheavyhitter

Oafley Jones wrote: »

You’re talking about watches here ... And in my experience anyone who speaks as definitely on “investments” is best ignored. Your own examples should set off alarm bells. The kermit was discontinued less than ten years ago, is an actual limited production Rolex all just preceding a bubble. The flat fours were the only ones trading at a premium before the true mania took hold.

Here is an example for you. 16610, pre-ceramic, 2012. Standard steel sports Rolex piece, nothing special or exotic agree? 12.8K Euro.
That is the speculation I am talking about. Retail in 2012, to grey market in 2019.
Nothing wrong with setting off alarm bells as you say, to wake up those asleep about the investment potential of a steel sports Rolex piece.
Wear it for 5+ years, then get back more than what one paid for it after.
But what do I know? I am just the madman, best ignored, with the Hulk.
https://www.watchfinder.ie/Rolex/Submariner/16610/1784/item/119391

893bet

There is a big bubble brewing there last two years. It can’t continue.

Simple logic.

There may not be a massive drop but a slight drop/tail off is a definite in the next few years. Can’t be far off peak.

Some watches will not drop as there is such pent up demand but the average sub etc will level off.

The opportunity cost of having money tied up in a watch is not to be ignored also. Every three years your watch needs to raise 10% just to fight inflation.

theheavyhitter

893bet wrote: »

There is a big bubble brewing there last two years. It can’t continue.

Simple logic.

There may not be a massive drop but a slight drop/tail off is a definite in the next few years. Can’t be far off peak.

Some watches will not drop as there is such pent up demand but the average sub etc will level off.

The opportunity cost of having money tied up in a watch is not to be ignored also. Every three years your watch needs to raise 10% just to fight inflation.

The graph may interest you. Even taking inflation into account, I think the increase in steel sports pieces such as the Submariner will continue to increase year on year. Regardless of economic boom and bust cycles, if Rolex continue at their current 800K pieces per annum production. The grey market will continue to boom, if anything more so. The supply/demand imbalance with waiting lists will keep it fueled.
https://ibb.co/ChrjMcB

Oafley Jones

theheavyhitter wrote: »

The graph may interest you. Even taking inflation into account, I think the increase in steel sports pieces such as the Submariner will continue to increase year on year. Regardless of economic boom and bust cycles, if Rolex continue at their current 800K pieces per annum production. The grey market will continue to boom, if anything more so. The supply/demand imbalance with waiting lists will keep it fueled.
https://ibb.co/ChrjMcB

Out of curiosity, what do you take away from that graph?

893bet

I take away the average watch are poor investments when you take inflation into account.

theheavyhitter

Oafley Jones wrote: »

Out of curiosity, what do you take away from that graph?

Rolex steel sports pieces, such as the Submariner increase in price year on year.
So projecting the price of a current 2019 Submariner at retail to say 2029 or 2039 etc, the resale/grey market price would also be exponentially higher than the original retail price paid. As per the 2012 16610 example I gave you earlier.
One can buy a piece, wear it for 5-10 years, then sell it for more than one originally paid. Hence my suggestion that Rolex steel sports pieces are good speculative investments.
In simple terms, the price of a Submariner does not decrease with time year on year, it increases in price with age.
Even when one factors in the inflation over time, it still returns a profit.
No offence implied with my suggestion that a steel sports Rolex piece is a good investment. I appreciate not everyone will agree with that.
The bottom line is, people buy pieces for different reasons. Some don't care about investment potential, or grey market resale value in the future and that is fair enough.
Personally I buy pieces for a mixture of reasons, both because I like a pieces looks, and also for investment potential too.
I like the idea of wearing a Hulk etc for say 5-10 years then selling it on at a profit after. So its win/win, I get the pleasure of wearing it for that time, and also enjoy the profit at the end of it.

893bet

If holding a piece for an extended period then maintenance will likely be required which will eat a lot of the “profit”.

On a single watch a person might do ok and make a few quid while enjoying the watch. On a larger collection things will likely balance out if you are lucky financially or lose a little if you do a little servicing, break a crystal, gasket wear and you get ingress etc.

theheavyhitter

893bet wrote: »

If holding a piece for an extended period then maintenance will likely be required which will eat a lot of the “profit”.

On a single watch a person might do ok and make a few quid while enjoying the watch. On a larger collection things will likely balance out if you are lucky financially or lose a little if you do a little servicing, break a crystal, gasket wear and you get ingress etc.

With regards to vintage pieces. Often collectors actually prefer an unserviced, unpolished piece. Reason being Rolex typically change the original dials and hands for service dials when the lume has patina, or dial has aged etc. Same with polishing out scratches to the case, and removing the sharp case edges.
Ironically the pieces that were never serviced nor polished sell for a premium compared to those that were every 5 years etc.
Granted if one breaks a crystal, or a gasket fails as you say; then one would have no choice but to repair.
But I am of the view that its better not to service or polish a Rolex piece when it comes to investment potential.
The reality is this, say you sold your Batman to Watchfinder, they would polish and service it before sale anyway. Whether you got it serviced over the 5-10 years you owned it, doesn't really affect the price they pay, or sell at. The only thing that really matters is having the box and papers. They can make any piece look as new prior to sale.
So one doesn't really have to factor in losing 1K on a service every 5 years etc.
For what its worth, I have never serviced any of my Rolex pieces over the years. The respective buyers didn't have a problem with that, as I always had the box, papers, AD original purchase receipt.
So condition/servicing is one thing, but I find having the boxing a papers is more important when it comes to resale.

theheavyhitter

OmegaGene wrote: »

I have never sold any of my Rolex pieces over the years.

hmmmm

Apologies for the typo (now amended). I have never serviced any of my Rolex pieces (not never sold). As previously stated.
I find I have to type fast before getting logged out, or I lose the text before its saved you see.

Cyrus

I don’t think the heavy hitter is a brand new member ....

893bet

OmegaGene wrote: »

Shots fired, i am getting the popcorn :D:D

Lads can ye hold off. I am just giong for dinner and my wife gets annoyed when I ignore her!

Anyone have an odlums for sale?

2shea

oxocube

Posted this on TZ a couple of weeks ago. Sorry for the cross post

Just watched this Collector Conversation video on youtube. The collector, Mike Nguyen started his interest in watches in 2017 and has every desirable Rolex available.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htxOMuDJ59s

In short

1) Be nice to the Dealer
2) Goes to them often to let them know that he's interested in a watch
3) Buys a LOT of Rolex's
4) Has patience in waiting for the watch he wants.

In the case of getting the Daytona he wanted, he also had to buy a white gold smurf.

So dropping 100/150k at a dealer will get you any watch you want. Simples

Wibbs

893bet wrote: »

I take away the average watch are poor investments when you take inflation into account.

Indeed. Now what follows is only my humble... In my opinion there is most certainly concerning trends in watches at the moment, vintage, new, Rolex or not. This isn't my first rodeo with seeing watches bubble and then deflate. I've been collecting watches off and on since the early 80's, when "old watches" unless they were in a precious metal were just old. So if I sold off my collection, yep I wouldn't lose money and in pretty much all cases double, triple or more my original "investment".

However I got most of them years ago, certainly the bulk before around 2010 when I could sniff the market changing. I saw it first shift in the area of military issued pieces. They were mostly at the cheap to middling end of the market and not so fashionable, but then were cool hunted by a few non watch magazines and "influencers" and went more mainstream and the prices started to climb and climb and then the supply of the most wanted dried up, then lesser stuff got added to the mix so long as it was issued and then their prices started to climb. Within 18 months you had watches that once went for around 200 quid, grow a zero at the end. Today? The supply has all but dried up, prices are stratospheric and collectors are hanging onto what they have. The market is stagnant.

You can observe another concerning factor by comparing BIN prices with low reserve auctions on ebay. When an item is roughly within say 20% BIN/Auction then that's a healthy market, when the market then has auctions ending at say 500 quid, but all the BIN prices are well over double that, that's not such a healthy market. Another thing observed on ebay when things are turning is very few auctions, nearly all BIN stuff. And they're staying for months not sold.

Back in the 90's Rolex Bubblebacks and early Oysters were very fashionable and collected like mad, they went a bit mainstream and prices went crazy and again the dealer prices went nuts and then... overnight the market collapsed. When was the last time you even read an article about them? In 1999 you'd have been hard pressed to avoid reading one and you weren't a collector if you didn't have an example of one.

On the going mainstream front: this was once a very niche hobby. Which while cheap to get into, information was hard if not impossible to come by and buying a pup was more common. EG in the late 80's I was offered a Rolex Milsub for 1500 pounds. Well outa my comfort zone, but even if it hadn't been I wouldn't have been sure it was a good one and I wouldn't have had much of a clue what it even was(I didn't). Then there's a period just before it goes mainstream where collectors get together and info and watches are shared among them. That's about the peak of the hobby in many ways. Then you get outfits like Hodinkee, which start off a welcome new player and resource, but then end up selling overpriced under researched tat on their website to newbies looking for fashion items and "investments" and god does nobody want to call emperors new clothes on that. They're too invested.

If you want to see how a collectors market can go, observe the rise and subsequent fall in values of old film posters and it followed the same narrative as above.

Now yes Rolex have generally always been bloody good as money substitutes(though again I saw steel cased examples go for feck all at one time and vintage Daytonas are rare enough, simply because they didn't sell well in period), but lately they're pulling the DeBeers angle with market restrictions and suggestions of extreme rarity. That's not a good sign and is not sustainable.

Apologies for the rant, but TL;DR? Buy what you like and will wear and enjoy wearing and forget the "market" and god, please forget the hype. Secondly a very good maxim on investments goes; buy when everyone else is selling, sell when everyone else is buying, never buy/sell when everyone else is.

theheavyhitter

Interesting analysis Wibbs, thanks for that.
With regard to vintage military pieces. What do you think of the CWC RN Diver's from the 1980's?
I always wondered why they weren't as collectible as say the 5513 Milsub, and Seamaster 300 Milsub; respectively.
Personally I like the reissues of them, made to the original 60 click and mineral crystal 80's spec.
Its just a shame the Tritium lume is no longer used on the dials.
A 5513 Milsub will always be out of my league, but I quite fancy an original 80's CWC though.
https://ibb.co/f07Lcws

Wibbs

theheavyhitter wrote: »

With regard to vintage military pieces. What do you think of the CWC RN Diver's from the 1980's?
I always wondered why they weren't as collectible as say the 5513 Milsub, and Seamaster 300 Milsub; respectively.

Fashion, marketing and the brand name effect. Simple as that pretty much. You see this in other vintage issued divers. So an issued Italian navy Panerai is mad money, but an issued Italian navy Breil can be had for 5-600 quid and the Breil is arguably the better watch, but it was a Panerai Sly Stallone wore in a flic and then bought more.

Ditto for issued French airforce Type XX. The Breguet makes the huge bucks just because of the name on the dial. It's a bought in movement the cases are so so, but it has that name, even though the company had(and has) as much connection to the original Breguet as I do. The French government noted this when Breguet started raising their prices compared to Dodane and the rest and told them to feck off. Hence there are more Breguet XX's that are "civilian", they had to sell them off.

There was always some hype and marketing in the watch market, but the Swiss really revved it up during the Swiss mechanical revival in the 80's(made possible by the financial war chest built up by selling cheap plastic quartz Swatches and remember the hype over them) and went to town on it since the interwebs grew and watches became more and more a male jewellery item. Some of the marketing howlers that nearly all the big names have come out with could fill a book. Rolex were always fantastically clever at marketing. Their founder Wilsdorf was a true genius at spotting a market and appealing to it. He doesn't get nearly enough credit there.

Take "superlative chronometer" on the dials. That's a trademark. In the actual chronometer trials of the 20th century they were barely in the mix, only making some headway in the mid 60's. Zenith, Longines, Omega, Movado and Nardin(who? exactly) blew the doors off them. They've also been clever in more recent times in avoiding howlers by letting their fans say stuff that they can distance themselves from. They'll even avoid authenticating vintage pieces, preferring collectors and dealers to slug it out.

And it worked and fair play to them and they do make some extremely nice well built tool watches, but always be aware of the hype with any brand, especially when prices have climbed to a scary level over the last few decades. The Omega Speedmaster for example when allowing for inflation, wages etc has gone up in price by over four times since Neil Armstrong wore one. The Rolex Sub, which was once the same price range as similar divers from Omega, Longines etc(because they were independent companies vying for the same buyers and a waiting list would mean buyers would go for something else) has gone through the roof in price.

theheavyhitter

Many thanks for the insight and history Wibbs. I wasn't aware of Breguet's history so that is interesting. Agreed, I think marketing has changed buyer perception of the big Swiss brands; when often other smaller brands are actually technically better. Oris are a brand I am big fan of, as they seem to have remained true; in the sense they are straight up about what they produce with no false marketing claims.

theheavyhitter

Interesting video here from Austin Daniels (great channel); where he discusses Rolex availability in Nakano, Tokyo.
The Watch Company was one store he visited, and they had 20 Batman, and 20 black GMT's in stock!
So if willing to pay the grey market premium, there appears to no problem with steel sports availability there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7m6MLpb17XY

893bet

theheavyhitter wrote: »

Interesting video here from Austin Daniels (great channel); where he discusses Rolex availability in Nakano, Tokyo.
The Watch Company was one store he visited, and they had 20 Batman, and 20 black GMT's in stock!
So if willing to pay the grey market premium, there appears to no problem with steel sports availability there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7m6MLpb17XY

If willing to pay the premium there are no shortage here either. C24 and WF are awash with models.

Very few watches are rare. Only 'rare' at RRP.

Wibbs

893bet wrote: »

Very few watches are rare.

Yup and even actually "rare" alone means very little in most cases. I'm sure I could trawl ebay tonight with a budget of a 1000 quid and find examples of vintage watches that are vanishingly rare and often from known marques. Hell I've got watches that there are only a few known, like sub ten examples known, even single examples, that cost me under 300 quid. Up that to say the price of an icon like a new basic Rolex Sub(6-7K? haven't looked recently) and give me a few days and I will find you interestingly even horology changing vintage pieces from well known marques that you'd travel a very long way to find another. 10k? Hold my beer...

Almost by definition commercially available pretty mass produced items aren't rare. If they were we wouldn't have a hobby, or it would be only a few dozen very rich types who could get into it. With any luxury Veblen good perception is a large percentage of the value we and the makers attribute to them. And that's cool by the way. Like I say if wristwatches were actually made from the finest unobtanium, handcrafted by Swiss gnomes in a hidden magical valley at a rate of ten a year we wouldn't have all the cool watches we can lust over and own. I would just suggest be wary of the hype when that starts to take over some areas.

funkyouup

Id like to give Wibbs a few hundred quid and let him off on ebay and see what he could find (for me obviously)

Wibbs

Funk, you had me right up to the (for me obviously) part.

893bet

Up to almost 17k euro.....one wonders is it the same watch they mark as sold....then relist with a higher price....

https://www.watchfinder.ie/Rolex/GMT%20Master%20II/116710%20BLNR/23940/item/134384

Fella on TZ selling one for 9k sterling!

Very cheap considering he has a 9.5 k sterling offer from WF.

theheavyhitter

893bet wrote: »

Up to almost 17k euro.....one wonders is it the same watch they mark as sold....then relist with a higher price....

https://www.watchfinder.ie/Rolex/GMT%20Master%20II/116710%20BLNR/23940/item/134384

Fella on TZ selling one for 9k sterling!

Very cheap considering he has a 9.5 k sterling offer from WF.

What was their increased offer for yours?
I see their Hulk prices are increasing as well.
See this 2017 one for 14K.
I reckon when they are discontinued they will probably be similar to the Batman at 15-17K etc.
https://www.watchfinder.ie/Rolex/Submariner/116610%20LV/16940/item/132568