In May earlier this year, riot police were called to ensure security at Swatch stores from Paris to Mumbai when violence often erupted as queues of people stretched around the streets. The object of their frenzied desires was a €370 bioceramic pocket watch.
The Royal Pop — the first time Audemars Piguet has let the Royal Oak design out of its own factory — turned people who had never owned a mechanical watch into speculators overnight. Within hours, resale sites were carrying listings above €7,400. Bad bet. Two months later, several models were selling for less than the €370 Swatch asks in store.
Far from the chaos, hundreds of thousands of people search the same market every day. In their quest for desirability, every major brand is closely monitoring the market for vintage revivals and other signs of popular trends. So what are people actually buying, and how do you avoid getting ripped off? We asked two of the people who know best.
Rolex still the leading investment
Perhaps unsurprisingly, most people online prefer to pick up a Rolex rather than a Swatch or an AP. The brand with the distinctive five-pointed ‘coronet’ has settled back to around 30% of transaction volume, on the German platform Chrono24, the world’s largest marketplace for pre-owned watches, according to Chrono24’s Rolex Report 2026.
“Rolex built its lead over decades,” says José Gaztelu, CEO of Chrono24. “Buyers often start with a Datejust or an Oyster Perpetual and move up from there,” Gaztelu says. “People discover the history, the references, the stories behind the models. It is what keeps people in the hobby,” he adds.
Over at Bezel, an American platform built on in-house authentication, which carried more than a billion dollars in active listings through the first half of 2026, Rolex leads every measure too: 34% of tracked interest, 28% of orders, 35% of watches registered in client collections.
“Rolex has recognition, product depth and liquidity all at once,” says Quaid Walker, the platform’s CEO. “It reflects the depth of the secondary market around virtually every major model. It inspires confidence for new buyers and experienced collectors alike.”
Cartier, Tudor or FP Journe gaining ground
But the Rolex shares are actually shrinking on Chrono24, after a peak above 44% in 2022. This decline, to the benefit of other brands, is seen as a “healthy normalization” of the market by Chrono24’s CEO. “Buyers are spreading demand across a broader set of brands and models. This shift is particularly visible among younger buyers.”
Who’s benefiting? “Cartier stands out most clearly, particularly in the €5,000 to €10,000 segment,” he says. “Patek Philippe and Vacheron Constantin have gained ground at the high end, while Audemars Piguet remains very strong as well. Beyond the high end, Tudor, Jaeger-LeCoultre and Longines are also worth mentioning.”
What are the trending models? “The Cartier Tank and the Tudor Black Bay represent two different sides of the shift we are seeing. The Tank reflects the renewed interest in elegant, distinctive classics, while the Black Bay shows that versatile sports watches with a clear identity remain highly relevant”, Gaztelu says.
Bezel’s data shows the same drift. Tudor took 14% of orders, finishing second by sales, ahead of Omega. Further out, the sharpest momentum is with the independents: F.P. Journe has been trading at strong levels, as a younger and well-informed base of collectors pays closer attention to the watchmakers behind the watches rather than to established brand names alone.
Vintage has momentum, but no buying spree
The trend press spent the first half of 2026 pushing smaller cases and louder dials. “Buyers are moving towards more classical proportions and more refined, dress-oriented watches,” says Gaztelu.
“Women are certainly part of this development. But men are also buying smaller watches than they did ten years ago. While 40mm remains a sports-watch sweet spot for many men, there is clearly more interest in refined dress watches with smaller case sizes. The industry has also added much more variety in the 35 to 39 millimetre range, which has become a versatile unisex sweet spot”, he adds.
The order books at Bezel show that vintage watches are still far from taking over the market. References from the 2020s and 2010s gather together roughly three-quarters of all activity. Buyers kept reaching for 40–41mm steel in black, blue and silver. Steel alone took 72% of orders.
“There’s clearly more energy around smaller cases and more expressive dials, but our buyers in the first half of 2026 were still concentrated around tried-and-true sizes and hues. Smaller watches aren’t necessarily a fad. It just means a trend can be culturally important before it becomes the centre of the market. I’d call it a real design trend, but not yet a broad buying trend”, Walker says.
Buy it because you want to wear it
Are you making a good investment? “There’s no reliable way to predict whether a watch will appreciate in value, but you can get a pretty good sense of how resilient its value may be,” says Walker. He starts with liquidity — how often the reference trades, how many buyers there are for it, where comparable examples are actually selling — then weighs condition, originality, production volume and the strength of the brand or watchmaker.
Walker refuses to name a 2026 good buy. “I’d start by assessing what someone already owns, what they actually wear, and the role they want the next watch to play in their collection,” he says. “For a newer collector, that might mean something versatile from a brand with real history and a deep catalogue to explore.”
“For a new collector, the biggest mistake is usually paying too much because a watch feels hard to get, or because the market around it is moving quickly,” he adds. “Understanding the recent transaction history and buying a strong example at a sensible price will generally matter more than trying to predict which watch is going to take off next.”
Gaztelu’s advice is simple. “There are classics that tend to have the steadiest demand and value retention or appreciation. But I will be direct: the vast majority of people should buy a watch because they love it, not as a bet. The collectors who are happiest years later are the ones who bought something they love, at a fair price, and kept it,” he adds.
Walker lands in the same place: “The best collections tend to feel personal rather than like a snapshot of whatever the market was excited about that year.”
Pick the one you actually like. And make sure it’s real. Bezel turned away 34% of the watches submitted for sale in the first half of 2026. Among them:a genuine Patek Philippe Aquanaut worth around $140,000 that had been stolen off a wrist in Ibiza, and a real Rolex Submariner fitted with a counterfeit dial.