This isn't a post I really wanted to write or share. The reason: it involves a brand I admire and respect. Some readers might decide that what I write here casts a negative light on that brand. At the end of the day, when I see information that just doesn't make sense, I feel obliged to comment on it regardless of whether it might ruffle a few feathers. I just feel a responsibility in that regard when it comes to readers and subscribers. It is important to me that the state of the watch market is truthfully known. As a side note: I'm going to soon post another story about the brand in question that highlights a neat achievement on their part, so please stay tuned. Ok, so here we go. Last week, a story in Bloomberg claimed that watch brand Zenith now has wait lists that are similar to those seen at Rolex and Patek Philippe. To set the stage: buyers have recently waited months or years for certain models from Rolex, Patek, and Audemars Piguet (among others). The Bloomber
This will be one of my more brief posts on the state of the watch market. The punchline is that, when you review charts anywhere, always make sure to check if the publisher has included the origin in the chart. The origin is the point where both variables presented in the chart take on the value zero (the really important thing is that the origin for the vertical value is included). Let me illustrate why this is important. In the first image presented below, I present data from a watch pricing analytics company. The data represents an "index" of Rolex asking prices on the preowned market. I think "index" is probably not a great way to describe this data, it really represents an average of some sort. In fact, I'm not really fond of this type of index for other reasons. A stock price index, for example, represents averaging of homogenous assets. It's true that stocks come from heterogeneous industries, but they are all subject to largely identical reporting