As specialists in the world of pre owned Rolex watches we so often get the same questions from perspective buyers about the pitfalls and upside of purchasing pre owned Rolex watches. We thought it would be useful to share the answers to those questions with you.
Do Rolex watches hold their value?
As frustrating as this answer is, in most cases "Yes" but (and there is an important "but") it really does depend on which Model you buy and the value that you got when you purchased it. It goes without saying that if you pay over the odds for something you will have a difficult job in selling it and not losing money on your purchase. When judging value, we believe that a bit of price research that you can do indepentdently will really help.
How much should I pay for a Rolex
My answer here is two fold. 1- you should never pay more than you can afford and 2- you should never pay more than the particular Rolex is worth. If you want to research what a Rolex watch is worth open yourself up to some research and the
Rolex website itself is a great place to start.
Bob's Watches also has a great feature which shows you what you could expect to pay for a particular watch and what you could hope to realise for the watch if you wanted to sell it. Of course Bobs Watches should be used as more of a guideline but none the less I think it useful to figuring out if a watch represents value or not. When you are looking at the Rolex website you might not always be able to see the exact model number of the watch you are considering buying but you should be able to find the same model. Understanding the price of the watch new can help you understand what people are willing to pay.
Are Rolex watches a good investment?
There are countless articles dedicated to this very question, many of which are written by people who are a lot more knowledgeable on the subject than me but in my opinion buying a Rolex as an investment piece is the wrong reason to buy a Rolex. It is of course true that many Rolex watches have become like commodoties, especially the steel
Daytona or the ever popular
Rolex Submariner watches. These watches are still being produced by Rolex but the demand is drastically outstripping supply resulting in a large markups for these watches on the pre owned market. So if your plan is a short term investment with potential large returns you could consider getting on the waiting list for one of these aforementioned watches and trying to flip it quickly as soon as you have bought it. Obviously you need to realise that the waiting lists can be as long as 12 years long and when you get to the top of them the Rolex Authorised Dealer might insist that they hold onto your Papers for a set amount of time to stop you flipping the watch, and the price your watch is commanding on the second hand market may well have dropped in the meantime. If you want to become a Rolex investor another way of doing it is to actively hunt for some of the rarer vintage Rolex watches, many of which have blemishes or idosyncracies that make them hugely valuable. Remember the amazing story of
THAT FIND down the back of the couch? The caveat with this approach is that you really need to know your stuff to be able to tell which watch is the Rolex is a gem with an "exotic" dial and which is a terrible replica that just happens to have paint that isn't holding its colour very well. So my advice is buy a Rolex because you love it, buy it at a good price and respect it. If you make money from it then wonderful, but in the meantime you enjoyed it, and isn't that what life is all about?
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