![]() That makes it difficult to hold a dealer liable for misrepresenting the history of a watch. The downside is that the secondary market is rife with uncertainty: Dealers and auction houses almost never claim that their reports on condition, authenticity, and provenance are anything more than opinion. The upside to going this route is that you can find unique vintage pieces, some of which might previously have been owned by a movie star or a dictator and can connect you by the wrist to their aura. ![]() The only other way to jump the queue, if you’re desperate enough for one of those models, is to buy from a secondhand dealer or at auction. Or if you’re doing under-the-table payments to the retailers on the side in cash.” “You’re just not gonna get it unless you’re a good pre-existing customer or a celebrity. But “the reality is you can’t even get on the wait list,” says Eric Wind, a former vice president of Christie’s and founder of the Palm Beach–based high-end watch dealership Wind Vintage. The industry speaks informally of a “50-year waiting list” for especially popular watches such as the Rolex Daytona, the Patek Philippe Nautilus, the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak, or the Vacheron Constantin Overseas. As a result, it is virtually impossible for someone who is not an established client to walk into a luxury watch retailer and buy a hyped model new. ![]() Yet even as demand has risen, the top watchmakers have not significantly raised their retail prices or their output, out of caution and with an eye toward long-term stability. Long a niche passion, luxury watches have become de rigueur for a broader, younger crowd, who thanks to the internet have quickly acquired specialized knowledge once limited to a small club of initiates. Phillips’s competitors also had their best years ever, with Christie’s reporting $205 million and Sotheby’s $148 million, a 50 percent increase over the previous year and well ahead of pre-pandemic annual sales.Īfter growing rapidly for the last 20 years or so, interest in luxury watches-as in many other collectibles, from sneakers to trading cards to wine-exploded during the pandemic, as people around the world all of a sudden had extra time to scroll through product shots on social media and eBay, and extra savings to spend. The sale capped a triumphant year for Phillips, which in 2021 boasted the highest total watch sales of any auction house in history, at $209.3 million. Tiffany’s and Patek Philippe ended up deciding to sell the watch to Taiwanese actor and watch collector Zach Lu-the underbidder in the camel hair coat-for his final bid (plus fees): $6.2 million. In late January, Phillips executive Paul Boutros told the watch site Hodinkee that the item was “unable to go to the original winning bidder,” providing no further explanation. In a dramatic twist, the transaction never went through. I think it was only when the final two bidders were going at it that we saw the real auction.” “It was masterful in the way it was orchestrated. “That was auction theater at its finest,” says a top watch-industry insider. The watch would have sold high no matter what, but Bacs’s performance had turned it into a moment.
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