- [Narrator] Let's say you wanted to buy a popular Rolex Daytona watch, a new one would cost you $14,800. But if you wanted to buy a used
version of this same watch, you might need to pay over $38,000. So why are people spending
more money to get a used Rolex? - If you use your watch
primarily for telling time, then we're not of the same mindset. - [Narrator] Here's why the
used watch market is booming, and what Rolex is doing
to get in on the action. This is the economics of used Rolexes. (gentle music) Experts suggest that it takes
about a year to make a Rolex, and wait list for new watches
can last months to years, and because of that. - These days you can't
walk into any Rolex store any Rolex dealer and just
get any watch that you want. For the past few years,
as demand has increased, Rolex has not been able to
keep up with that demand, their production just can't match the number of people that want a Rolex. If you've got 10, $20,000 to
burn, you really wanna watch, you're probably gonna
go to the resale market because the watch that you want
is gonna be available there, and so the prices on the
resale market have then gone up because there's more people
going to that market. - [Narrator] 29% of collectors reported paying more than retail price for their most recent pre-owned watch, according to a report from
Boston Consulting Group. And 40% said that one of their top reasons was that they were able to
avoid long waiting lists in the firsthand market, this has created a boom
in the secondary market. Pre-owned watch sales
reached 22 billion in 2021. The used sector is actually growing faster than the primary market, and for some people used watches are worth more than new ones that's because some rare
styles are more desirable, or because Rolex has discontinued
certain models and colors. - An older model Rolex can have a patina, it can have some wear marks, and so those kind of personal details, those kind of personal age marks, those are things that
collectors might want. There is also a bragging rights thing where if you have a Rolex
from the '70s or the '80s, you're able to say it's from this era, it's, you know, 20, 30
years older than I am and that is just kind of
cool to collectors in a way. The market about a decade ago was softer than it is right now. Back then, you could sell a
watch and get a return on it, but you could also sell a Rolex and it could have depreciated in value and you could lose money on it. These days you now will likely
make more money off of it if you sell it on the resale market. - [Narrator] Much of the
success of the used watch market is due to the rise of online
watch resale marketplaces over the past decade. That's where people like
Paul and Carol come in. - (laughs) Can we hold that. - Get over there buddy. - [Narrator] The husband and wife duo run Bob's Watches, an online marketplace for buying, selling, and
trading luxury watches. They say that they currently have one of the largest selections of used Rolex watches in the world. - I started out in the watch business because I could see that
there was no real safe, transparent, honest place for people to buy and sell pre-owned watches. It's been an upward trend since 2010, we've been growing consistently about 30 to 40% year-over-year. Two years ago we did
$100 million in sales. - There's so much more for us to tap into that we haven't had
the bandwidth to get to because the growth has
been so fast and furious. - [Narrator] And Paul
and Carol love Rolex's. Sales of used watches online already exceed auction and store sales, and one report predicts they're going to reach close to 60% of the secondhand luxury market by 2026. - During the pandemic, the
stock market goes crazy. You have the kind of crypto phenomenon, you have meme stocks happening, and people have a lot of extra capital and they're taking that in many cases and they're putting it toward assets, luxury goods and in a
lot of cases watches. - [Narrator] Starting in 2020, used luxury watches sold for 1.5 to three times their retail prices. - Rolex is a brand that's
really recognizable in it's designed, it's, you
know easy to spot on the street. And a lot of people, they'll see that their friend has a given Rolex, and they think, "I want that too." - But Rolex, the company,
only sold new watches, which meant that the brand wasn't involved with used watch sales, that is until late 2022. Rolex opened a certified pre-owned program for its used watches. Retailers can send used Rolexes that are at least three years
old back to the watchmaker. The certified pre-owned program verifies that a watch
is an authentic Rolex and works properly, then retailers can sell the watch with an official Rolex certificate. The program is already active in one retail chain in
six different countries. Another chain of official
Rolex retailers in the US will enter the program this May. Buying a watch with Rolex certification could be a draw for first time buyers. - You're buying a watch on the internet, it can be a little bit
of a daunting experience. - Of all the watches on our website today, almost 50% of them already have the original box and papers from Rolex. We've offered a CPO program, a certified pre-owned program
now for almost five years. The only thing really new about it is that Rolex is certifying and doing the paperwork behind it. So I don't feel that there's
any increased competition, but I do feel that the
market is big enough for everybody to participate. - Today people buy Rolexes online the way that they might buy toilet paper, so it's really not a premium
or a specialized experience. There's still that consumer that wants to have that
experience of going into a store, of being waited on, of
kind of being shown watches from a glass display case, and
making it feel more special because they're buying
something of such a high value. - [Narrator] This
certified pre-owned program means that Rolex can take
a cut out of a market that it previously left untapped, but things might continue to shift for the luxury watch market. The used watch market is cooling down as sellers eager to make a profit have flooded the market with inventory. Recent data shows the
number of Rolex watches available to buy secondhand, roughly doubled from the beginning of 2022 to September of the same year. - On those really coveted
kind of brand name watches, so to speak, the ones
that collectors talk about the resale value has
gone down a little bit. Resellers, people that watch that market, they do say that the
prices have come back down to earth a little bit,
but the volume of sales, the amount of sales happening that still remains pretty high, we're seeing still a large number of transactions in the resale market. Your day-in, day-out Rolex is still retaining a lot of
value on the resale market, you can still get a
pretty good return for it. As with any resale market, there is a risk that the Rolex market can fall out at any time. Five years ago, we might
not have been talking about how crazy this market is, and five years from now we
might not be talking about how crazy this market is. The market is so large that to a certain extent
both things can be true. You know, people that watch this market will say that that's just
actually a reflection of how big the market is now, where it can behave in many different ways just because it is this
kind of really large transactional marketplace. (upbeat music)
