Watch Collectors Are Losing Faith In Big Luxury Brands

The watch collecting world is experiencing a trust crisis that’s reshaping decades of brand loyalty and investment assumptions.

Collectors who once viewed Rolex, Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet and other luxury brands as unshakeable pillars of horological value are now questioning whether these heritage giants deserve their dominant positions.

Deloitte’s Swiss Watch Industry Insights 2024 captures this shift, reporting that global consumer interest in buying pre-owned watches has doubled since 2020 while indifference has halved, signaling that collectors are actively seeking alternatives beyond the traditional luxury hierarchy.

The same Deloitte report notes that “rare and vintage watches are seen as desirable … independent brands that offer craftsmanship and exclusivity are increasingly popular.”

This isn’t just consumer preference shifting at the margins. It represents a fundamental reassessment of what constitutes value in watch collecting, with implications for anyone holding pieces from established brands or considering them as investment vehicles.

The Growing Distrust Toward Big Watch Brands

Rising prices combined with artificial scarcity have damaged the credibility that heritage brands spent generations building.

Rolex exemplifies this dynamic, maintaining roughly 22% market share by volume in secondary markets according to Q2 2025 Market Movements data shared on Instagram, yet creating allocation systems that force buyers to develop relationships with authorized dealers or pay substantial premiums on the grey market. This controlled scarcity feels less like natural supply constraints and more like manufactured exclusivity designed to inflate values.

The resale market correction tells us what collectors really think about recent pricing levels, as WatchGecko’s Secondary Watch Market 2025 Update , who tracks the ChronoPulse Watch Index, documents that after the 2022 peak, many highly traded models have “slipped back to their values achieved in July 2021.”

For collectors who bought during the pandemic frenzy believing that blue-chip watches only appreciate, this correction has been financially painful and trust-destroying. When a steel sports watch loses 20% to 30% of its value within two years despite the brand’s supposed investment-grade status, collectors start questioning the entire value proposition.

WatchGecko’s analysis captures the sentiment shift directly, noting that collectors sometimes “lose confidence … feel items are too overheated or hyped beyond their actual value.”

This loss of confidence doesn’t just affect individual purchase decisions. It undermines the social consensus that made certain brands seem like safe havens for capital, similar to how art market corrections expose which pieces were genuinely valued versus which were riding speculative momentum.

What the Data Says About Changing Collector Behavior

Collective Horology’s 2024 survey showed that 72% of respondents believe the watch industry remains in a “strong” or “very strong” position, suggesting optimism about collecting overall even as specific brand preferences shift. Meanwhile, 59% still describe themselves as brand-loyal, but the report emphasizes that independent brands are increasingly attracting disproportionate attention and spending relative to their market presence.

Moreover, Collective Horology found 64% of collectors worried about rising prices, while 61% view the secondary market as a positive alternative to retail. These figures reveal collectors actively seeking ways around authorized dealer networks and retail markups, which weakens the traditional brand-controlled distribution model that helped maintain price discipline and market positioning.

Chrono24 and YouGov conducted a 2024 Luxury Watch Survey covering roughly 2,123 respondents focused on first-time buyers, revealing that purchase motivations are evolving beyond simple brand prestige. When newer collectors enter the market looking for craftsmanship, uniqueness, or investment potential rather than just wearing a recognized logo, it creates opportunities for brands outside the traditional hierarchy while challenging the pricing power of established names.

WatchGecko’s Summer 2025 report used the ChronoPulse index to show depreciation across many top models from their peaks, while also noting that dealers and secondary market platforms increasingly focus on counterfeiting, trust, and authentication challenges.

These authentication concerns push collectors toward brands and models with clearer provenance and less sophisticated counterfeit operations, which often means avoiding the most counterfeited references from mainstream luxury brands.

Are Independent Watchmakers Becoming the New Status Symbol?

The auction result that best captures this shift came when F.P. Journe’s “Second Wristwatch Ever Made,” a Tourbillon Souverain à Remontoire d’Égalité from 1993, sold for CHF 7.32 million, roughly $8.36 million.

Hodinkee reported this as the highest-price independent wristwatch ever sold at auction, a milestone that would have seemed impossible a decade ago when independent brands struggled for recognition outside niche collector circles.

Phillips auction results show this wasn’t an isolated anomaly but part of sustained performance for top independent brands. Multiple F.P. Journe models including Chronomètre Bleus and Octa references have exceeded estimates consistently, as documented on Phillips’ auction archives.

Hairspring’s market analysis covering F.P. Journe over the last decade attributes this appreciation to scarcity, brand philosophy, and collector passion rather than marketing budget or retail presence, suggesting that authenticity and craft can compete with heritage and scale.

Jamais Vulgaire’s 2025 Value Watch Index analyzed 12 years of market data from 2013 through 2025, drawing on sources including WatchCharts, ChronoPulse, Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Yahoo auctions to identify 30 models that outperform the pre-owned market average. The fact that many of these outperforming models come from independent or niche brands rather than the usual Rolex and Patek references demonstrates that collector money is following quality and rarity rather than just brand recognition.

Deloitte’s documentation of rising neo-vintage and vintage demand fits within this independent brand appreciation, as collectors seek uniqueness over brand prestige. The investment implications are significant because independent watchmakers typically produce in much smaller quantities than mainstream luxury brands, creating natural scarcity that can’t be artificially manipulated through allocation games.

When an independent maker produces 200 pieces annually versus Rolex’s estimated million-plus watches, the secondary market dynamics work differently and potentially more favorably for long-term value retention.

The New Definition of Luxury in Watch Collecting

Heritage brands are responding to these shifts by adopting strategies that essentially acknowledge their credibility problems. Deloitte’s 2024 Swiss Watch Insights documents brands embracing Certified Pre-Owned programs, trade-in initiatives, vintage lines, and transparency measures specifically designed to rebuild trust.

The fact that brands need formal CPO programs to assure buyers that their watches are authentic and properly serviced suggests how far trust has eroded in traditional retail channels.

The Deloitte report explicitly states what many collectors already feel: “Consumers favour neo-vintage watches … independent brands that offer craftsmanship and exclusivity are increasingly popular.”

This preference for neo-vintage over new production reflects both financial considerations, as older references often offer better value, and aesthetic ones, as many collectors prefer proportions and designs from earlier eras before case sizes inflated and complications proliferated.

Marc Montagne’s observation in Luxury Society captures the paradox facing heritage brands: “Over the course of a decade, luxury watches have become much more mainstream.”

This mainstreaming, driven by social media exposure and celebrity endorsement, has made owning a Rolex or Audemars Piguet less special precisely because these brands succeeded in expanding their cultural reach. For collectors seeking distinction rather than conformity, this mainstreaming pushes them toward brands and models that haven’t yet been adopted by every Instagram influencer and professional athlete.

Jamais Vulgaire’s Value Watch Index weights storytelling, rarity, and historical performance as factors distinguishing models that appreciate from those that stagnate or decline. This framework privileges exactly the attributes that independent brands can deliver more authentically than mass-market luxury producers: genuine stories about individual craftspeople and their innovations, actual rarity from limited production capacity, and historical performance that reflects collector passion rather than marketing manipulation.

The trust crisis affecting heritage watchmakers suggests that brand premium and historical prestige may be less durable than craft quality and genuine scarcity. Collectors who assumed that blue-chip watches would always appreciate, or at least hold value, have learned through the 2022-2025 correction that speculation can distort even supposedly investment-grade assets.

Meanwhile, those who focused on independent brands offering transparent craftsmanship and limited production have often seen better returns while also owning more distinctive, personally meaningful timepieces.