Today, I happened to notice that Jomashop is selling a large number of Rolex references, many at a discount relative to the official price. My subjective impression is that this does not happen very frequently, so I wanted to more formally tease out some implications of this development. I assembled a spreadsheet of the listings and ran some numbers.
For this discussion, I will focus on the references which Jomashop identifies as "Men's" (due to the fact that I am unfamiliar with the other references which are listed). Jomashop lists 197 references for sale at a discount relative to list. This is a remarkable variety of watches on the grey market, expecially considering that Rolex contracts likely penalize ADs who resell through third party dealers. The average discount across these references is 10% with a minimum discount of 1% (mostly 36mm Datejusts in precious metals with unique dials) and a maximum discount of 31% (Cellini Pink Dial Automatic Men's 18kt Everose Gold Watch ref 50705RBR). Please note that the average I'm reporting is not weighted by the inventory of each reference (in fact, nothing here will involve such weighting since Jomashop doesn't reveal its stock numbers).
I was curious if the discount was constant across all price points. Scatterplot of Jomashop Rolex discounts. The answer is no. Discounts are typically higher for higher priced references, as shown by the figure here. I ran the numbers and, for every $10k increase in price, Jomashop increases its discount by .46% (approximately half of one percent, this result is statistically significant).
Next, I was curious if the discounted references were connected to materials, in some way. The answer is yes. Approximately 85% of the discounted references (168) were in gold or platinum.
Finally, let's turn to the topic of which models are discounted and by how much. Discount amount by model. Approximately 91% of the discounted references were one of three models. There were 22 Cellini references, 55 Datejust references, and 102 Day-Date references. The Cellini had the highest discount, at 14.2%. As the figure shows, the Day-Date has the widest range of discounts, with an average of roughly 11.6%. The Datejust had the lowest average discount, at 5.4%.
In summary, these listings on Jomashop suggest that buyers should carefully consider whether they are willing to pay full retail for certain references. At higher price points, they should likely expect a lower price from sellers. I'll also note that the overrepresentation of precious metal references in these discounted listings is consistent with my last piece, where I noted that Rolex' costly foundry may not presently generate the type of revenue the brand expects (hence gold reaching its tendrils into the Explorer 1 design, in a coming piece I will share feedback I received suggesting this may not be the case).
What it might look like if Aragon and Argon watches actually went to court over the trademark dispute. My prior post described a disappointing development for those collectors hoping to acquire an Argon Spaceone watch via the brand's Kickstarter campaign. The campaign had reached over $1 million in funding when Kickstarter's management stepped in and froze the whole thing over an "intellectual property dispute." When I posted about this development on Instagram , Hodinkee editor Tony Traina noted in the comments that another brand, Aragon watches, had filed a complaint with the US Patent and Trade Office (USPTO) back in April (thanks Tony!). Argon's account replied and indicated that they had already filed a registration for their brand name and they were retaining counsel in New York City. On Tuesday, June 27 of this week, more details were offered via a lawsuit filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida. The case is filed on behalf
Among many avid watch collectors, the term "in house movement" seems to elicit eyerolling disdain. Pieces of an assortment, including balance spring, from a non-Swiss movement. There is a sizeable perception that "in house" is, in fact, nothing more than an unnecessary marketing ploy designed to tease more money out of the wallet of buyers (by way of definition, an "in house" movement means that the mechanism inside a watch was predominently manufactured by a brand itself, kind of like "we make our own bread" at a restaurant). I'll confess that I'd begun to think similarly, that is, until I read a 66 page report posted by the Swiss Competition Commision on May 10, 2023. Yes, this is the kind of thing an economist finds interesting on a weekend, or at least this economist. Before we get into the details of this report, in the interest of full disclosure I should say that the original document was in a different language: lawyerese.
There comes a moment in the servicing of a watch that is probably easy to miss among the hundreds of steps required to remove a movement from a case, inspect the parts, repair anything amiss, lubricate all the pieces, and put the whole thing together again. A watch that Rolex's investigator bought at Beckertime for approximately $4,500. The lawsuit refers to this as "Counterfeit Watch One." That moment is when a watchmaker takes the dial and reattaches it to the movement. There is nothing particularly unique when it comes to the tools required or the tasks involved in this step. Instead, what is unique about this moment is that the watchmaker holds in their hand a mark that is not the property of the watchmaker and it is not exactly the property of the watch's owner. In the case of Vacheron Constantin, that mark is a Maltese Cross. For Audemars Piguet, it is the brand's initials. When it comes to Rolex, the mark is a widely recognized crown. If the reassembly
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