Collectors’ ‘moment of discovery’ drives up watch auction prices
Buyers increasingly are seeking rare historical pieces, rather than looking to accumulate status symbols
As auctioneer Aurel Bacs brought the hammer down on the highest-grossing watch auction ever, he felt justice was “being served”. “Overall there was this sense of, after decades of waiting . . . the world is giving the same amount of respect and credit to the watch community as to art and other wonderful collecting areas,” says Bacs, a senior consultant to Phillips, which took SFr74.8mn ($96.3mn) in the Geneva sale in May.
The 43 world records achieved in that sale are among a slew of recent eye-catching results that point to the buoyancy of the auction market for watches. Phillips grew total sales for its spring watch auctions from $114mn to $235mn year on year. Sotheby’s realised its highest total for a watch sale, setting a new record for the most valuable watch auction held in Asia, in Hong Kong in April. The following month, Christie’s and Bonhams set their own auction records.
Geoff Hess, global head of watches at Sotheby’s, says the auction market is “ripping”, with “explosive” growth across modern and vintage watches. There is “quite enormous” global demand, he says, adding that the number of bidders per lot is up from five in 2025 to six this year to the end of May. There has also been a 60 per cent rise in both average lot value ($81,500) and spend ($139,000), and half of lots sold above the high estimate, compared with 27 per cent last year, Hess says.
The “poster child . . . for the market being on fire”, as Palm Beach-based watch dealer Eric Wind puts it, is the independent watchmaker FP Journe. Phillips sold a rare pink gold and platinum Chronomètre à Résonance “Souscription, No 007” (c2000) for $13,922,000 last month, an auction record for this brand or any other independent watchmaker. Half of the top 10 lots in that New York sale, which achieved a record total for a watch auction in the US, were FP Journe pieces.
“François-Paul [Journe] himself is clearly one of the greatest watchmakers in the history of watchmaking . . . his innovations, his finishing, his cleverness, his talent [are] historic,” says Bacs. He says independent watchmakers are combining the quality, features and hand-finishing buyers seek with the romance and storytelling that can be missing from contemporary watches by luxury groups.
Recent records have been set for other independents including Voutilainen, Roger Smith and Akrivia (Rexhep Rexhepi). Oliver Müller, founder of Swiss watch industry consultancy LuxeConsult, says the secondary market is a reflection of the primary market, where high-end independents are performing well.
Patek Philippe, which Bacs says is “as much of a pillar of the landscape in watch collecting as Picasso is in art”, is another brand driving the market, with rare contemporary and vintage pieces sought-after. Phillips achieved HK$80.37mn ($10,255,212) for a Ref 2499 First Series in pink gold (1951) in Hong Kong in May, an auction record for a timepiece sold in Asia.
Auctions are one segment of the secondary market. Analysis by Morgan Stanley of data from secondary watch market research platform WatchCharts found prices for Patek Philippe were up 17.1 per cent year on year in the first quarter of 2026. Across 35 Swiss brands, prices rose 1.9 per cent quarter on quarter in the first three months of this year, continuing the “stabilisation and recovery” of the secondary market that began in the first quarter of 2025 following the peak of the bubble in 2022.
Remi Guillemin, head of watches for Emea and the Americas at Christie’s, says the auction market today is “healthier” than during the Covid-19 pandemic, when purchases were “linked to status or to acquiring the most fashionable and recognisable pieces”. At that time, says Sotheby’s Hess, people were buying many modern steel sports watches, “the prices of which were going up exponentially very quickly”. The product in demand now “is far more broad and varied”, he adds. “We’re in a real moment of discovery.”
Last month, Christie’s sold a white gold Audemars Piguet jumping hour watch (c1928) for $1,016,000, nearly 34 times the low estimate. “It shows you that, today, clients are not looking for hype, they’re looking for watches that have shaped the world of watchmaking,” says Guillemin, who adds that clients are now more knowledgeable, while the pool of buyers and sellers is “growing tremendously”.
Auction houses are attracting a younger audience. Thirty-five per cent of bidders and buyers for watches at Phillips during the first half of 2026 were under 40; about 40 per cent of new registrants for a Christie’s watch auction were millennials.
Hess believes a factor behind Sotheby’s own audience being “meaningfully younger” is that people enjoy being part of a community, as demonstrated by the wider growth in interest in experiences and travel.
“One of the great joys in watch collecting is you’re buying an experience, you’re creating relationships,” adds Hess, who in 2019 founded Rolliefest, a New York gathering for collectors. He says that Sotheby’s embraces the notion of community in its sale rooms by having hotdog carts and drinks.
Wind, owner of Wind Vintage, has “never seen the watch market hotter” for vintage and special independent pieces. “The caveat is, people are looking for exceptional watches,” he says, “and I don’t feel like it’s an incredibly deep market in terms of buyers.” He says top buyers with unlimited resources have “never been hungrier for excellent watches”, with some collectors pivoting to watches from other categories.
Wind adds that “a lot of the more common watches are not really moving” in value. He adds, however, that headline-grabbing results have a “halo effect”. “It helps everyone feel confidence all the way down to someone buying a $5,000 vintage Rolex,” he says.
Brands such as Panerai, Piaget and Tag Heuer have referenced vintage designs when launching new releases in recent months. Wind says there is “a synergistic effect”: contemporary releases lead people to seek out original models, and “brands are monitoring what people want in terms of their vintage watches and then obviously trying to replicate it in some way”.
He warns that inventory could become an issue for auction houses, highlighting the importance of continuing to find rare pieces to keep collectors happy. He thinks at the market’s top end it “might be a little bit dry in the near term, in terms of the trophy examples out there”.
Having exceptional pieces, including “the most incredible Cartier collection ever assembled”, has boosted recent performance at Sotheby’s, says Hess. But he thinks the buoyancy is here to stay. “I have great confidence that we’re at the beginning of a long road up,” he says.