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A Royal Oak for £2500?

written by A.Morgan - 9th Jan 2012

You don’t have to be minted to buy an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak – you just have to be to patient…

With the RRP of the famous Gerald Genta-designed piece now set at an eye-watering £11,110, it seems like the prospect of owning one is disappearing further and further into the distance, but with a bit of careful thinking and a lot of patience, you could own one for less than a quarter of that price.

Investing in watches may seem counter-productive, but with some careful thought and research it is possible to climb the watch market ladder and bag a piece that was previously out of reach. Granted, an element of luck is needed too, but understanding what to avoid and what to buy and why will certainly give you favourable results. As with all investments, the risks are there, but by being sensible these pitfalls can easily be avoided.

Using sales data collated from across the internet, it has been possible to retrospectively map a course to owning a Royal Oak by spending just £2,500, and that’s just through purchasing and selling pre-owned watches that are readily available, rather than with super-rare special-edition one-off pieces that are a law unto themselves. That path takes five years, and is as follows:

You might have noticed a pattern – stainless steel sports Rolex are pretty much the way to go if you want to make money with your watches. Look out for new releases too – even though the Rolex Deepsea Sea-Dweller was rather unpopular at launch, over the course of two years the RRP had increased by over £2000 and the pre-owned prices had followed suit. Even the cheapest steel sports Rolex earn good money – a Submariner 14060 bought five years ago for £1500 would now be worth close to £3000. Avoid watches that depreciate heavily after purchase, because they will, on the whole, only continue to go down in value.

The best thing about the process is that the whole while you buy and sell, you get to enjoy some of the finest watches money can buy. Who knows – once you reach your goal you may just find yourself hankering after the watch that started the journey in the first place.