There’s no good way to buy a Rolex
So maybe just don’t
I get asked a lot for advice on buying watches. Sometimes, rarely, someone will ask for thoughts about that once in a lifetime watch, the watch, and almost without fail they mean a Rolex. Which one should they get, where should they go to get it, what about this versus that color or metal etc.
My response is always the same: Do you have to?
Because maybe there is a right Rolex for you, but there is no good way to buy it. And while there are plenty of Rolexes I’d wear with joy, there are exactly none I would spend my money on right now, or yours.
Let me explain.
Over the last 20 odd years, Rolexes have shot up in value, even while the sticker prices haven’t gone up nearly as fast. There’s a combination of reasons. Part of it is people have worked out that watches actually hold their value remarkably well when, say, the housing market crashes the economy, or inflation goes nuts, or those crypto cartoon NFTs take a beating. As a result, the used/antique (or, if you want to sound like a tosser, “vintage”) market has exploded, and demand in general has soared.
The other big reason is that demand for Western luxury status goods in Asia has gone stratospheric in the last quarter century, in no small part thanks to the big bang of the Chinese economy. Ballers in Macau like shiny nice things just as much as hedge fund bros in New York.
In all cases, Rolex has been top of people’s shopping lists. And they’ve sold out—literally. You cannot walk into a store and just buy a Rolex. Anywhere.
Rolex makes about a million watches a year, give or take. And, this is just my thumb-up-the-ass estimation, I’d bet they could sell somewhere close to 2.5x that number. It’s not that they want to limit supply—there’s a lot of money on the table for them here—it’s that their supply is limited.
Their Swiss factory can only kick out about a million watches a year, that’s just the max volume. Why don’t they just build another factory? Man power. They aren’t making Ford Explorers over there, and hand assembling a Swiss watch of any quality, let alone for the crown, is a technical vocation that requires a full blown education and apprenticeship. And there’s a labor shortage. The kids just aren’t signing up to be horologists anymore.
Rolex simply can’t expand their production volume to the size of, say, Omega, without changing how they make their product and lowering quality. That’s the bind.
All this is why it’s hard to buy a Rolex. But it isn’t why there’s no good way to do it.
There are only two ways you can buy a Rolex: at retail from one of Rolex’s authorized dealers, or on the gray market, trading in “used” products. I’ll get to the scare quotes in a minute.
Rolex ADs are, and I don’t want to generalize here, a smarmy pack of thieving bastards, and they are absolutely coining it off the current product shortage.
Say you go into your local fancy jewelry store. They have a big Rolex sign out front to let you know they’re in the magic circle of ADs and you think “Great, a Rolex shop. I want to buy a Rolex, so I will go in and buy one.”
You fool. You’re about to be condescended to by the worst kind of charlatan. Tell them that you’re there to buy a Rolex and they will sneer smugly at you like you’re a freshman college kid who just walked into a bar and said “I’d like to order one alcohol, please.”
They may just scoff at you for your presumption. Or, if they decide you look like you might actually have a couple of grand to spend, they’ll give you the talk.
They will congratulate you on your evident taste and discernment, and they will tell you how honored they are to “start with you on your journey” towards owning a Rolex. They’ll show you all the nice pictures of the different models; maybe, if you’re really lucky, they’ll still have a display model they haven’t sold out the side door and they’ll let you hold it for a minute.
Then, when you actually suggest you’d like to buy one, you know, now, they will explain that, of course, there is a waitlist for these prize trophies of refinement, but they’d be glad to add your name to it.
How long is the list? Who can say, sir, it really just depends on so many imponderables.
Then they will start talking about “building a relationship” with you, at which point you should immediately feel your cheeks tense up.
In what other circumstance do you walk into a shop and ask to buy the product they advertise over their door and they start talking to you about needing to date a while before they give it up?
Don’t be fooled though, this isn’t a courtship and you aren’t wooing them; you’re being warned that you’re the one about to get screwed.
What it boils down to is this: If you want to get to the top of the waiting list, you better spend some money.
Doesn’t matter how they make it, the pitch will come eventually. Ask why you’ve been waiting months for that watch you ordered and you’ll eventually get some version of “Maybe sir would consider this nice Tudor while you wait, or maybe sir’s significant other has a birthday coming up and you’d like to see some diamonds?”
That’s how you “build a relationship” with a Rolex AD: You pay the chiseling spiv to move up the list by buying his other wares. It’s outrageous, and it’s 100% the reason you want to be a Rolex AD these days.
Now, Rolex doesn’t get anything out of this, and it wasn’t the point of the AD network to begin with. In the days when you could buy a Submariner as easily as a Seamaster, the point was to make sure the dealers were actually reputable and not selling BS goods. This sort of bollocks is purely a result of the recent boom in demand and scarcity of product.
Would I max out my credit card and buy the new Air-King for $7,400 if I saw one in a shop window? In a red hot second. But am I willing to crawl and scrape and wheedle and beg and PAY for the privilege of waiting in line to drop thousands of dollars? Hell no.
And neither should you.
Rolex didn’t create this problem with the ADs, and they aren’t making anything off of it. But Rolex is aware of it, and they’ve done exactly Jackie Chan about it, and that’s on them.
So, in the meantime, if you want to buy a Rolex on your own schedule and without having to grease some oily shopkeeper for the privilege, you’re going to be headed into the gray market and, while I do most of my shopping and make most of my recommendations from there, I wouldn’t buy a Rolex there either.
For a start, you are going to pay. A lot.
Starting price for that new Air-King on Chrono24 right now is around $15K—double the retail price. Granted if I wanted it fast, the AD would probably have charged me that much too, but I’d have a new Black Bay and a nice Tag Monaco to show for my pain. On the gray market it’s pure Goodfellas economics.
You wanna watch?
And that’s if you’re buying from a “reputable” professional dealer who’s selling you a legit watch, with the original box and papers, and who probably got the thing new from an AD and he’s just marking it up 100% for pure profit. I wonder how they make it to the top of the AD waiting lists. Who can say?
If you’re buying a truly used Rolex from some guy, even on sites that do good work keeping money in escrow and posting transaction feedback, there’s a whole world of stuff to be afraid of. Such is the premium on Rolex and genuine Rolex parts these days that single bracelet links or tiny internal screws can sell for hundreds of dollars, and there’s just no way of knowing, short of buying the watch and taking it apart, if it’s been partially cannibalized.
Like I said, there’s no good way to buy a Rolex.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying Rolex doesn’t make a great watch, or that I wouldn’t love a Milguass with the green crystal. I absolutely would. And if you’re going into the process with eyes open and your heart is set, follow your bliss and God bless.
But if you just want a really nice watch and think this means it’s got to be a Rolex, I’d strongly encourage you to look elsewhere. It’ll cost you less, in so many ways. And in some cases you can actually get a hell of a lot more watch for your money.
Let’s take three examples.1
Probably the hardest Rolex to buy, and the one that’ll cost you most to get your hands on, is the Daytona. It’s a racing chronograph with screw down pushers for the stopwatch and a tachymeter bezel. Paul Newman used to wear one and this is probably the most over hyped watch in the world.
It’s come in a bunch of variations over the years, in steel and gold. The cheapest version of the current iteration will run you a hair under $15k at retail, if you can find one. And you can’t. For a used Daytona, and I mean really used, any model, any year, the bidding starts there and gets into the 30s fast. For a nearly-new recent model? You can expect to see prices in the 40s.
Or, for a lot less money, you could have your pick from Zenith's range of El Primeros for just over or under $10k. But, why would you want this watch instead of a Daytona?
Well, for a start, I think they are just flat out better looking. But if you’re looking for snob appeal, consider this: it's called the El Primero because when it launched in 1969 it was the first ever automatic (self-winding) movement with a fully integrated chronograph (stopwatch function). And this was a high beat movement, meaning it ticks so fast it can capture tenths of a second.
How amazing was this as a piece of engineering? Amazing enough that Rolex were still buying in El Primero movements to use inside the Daytona until 2000.
You can spend upwards of $40k on a “vintage” Daytona if you want, but what you’re buying is an El Primero in a Rolex case.
I’m not a vertical integration snob, and Rolex make a nice case, but frankly I’d pick the El P even if we weren’t talking about a functional price difference of upwards of fifteen thousand dollars.
Everybody wants a Submariner, right?
Long before Rolex became a meme stock, before the quartz crisis meant mechanical watches became de facto luxury goods, this was a serious tool watch for serious people.
The military version was standard issue for the Royal Navy divers in the ‘50s, and it was an icon — the original Bond movie watch. And the original MilSub version didn’t even have that stupid Mercedes hour hand.
The ugly hour hand to one side, no watch better sums up how Rolex turned what was a working man’s tool into a top-shelf toy. The finishing has come a long way since the ‘50s and the movement has gotten better and better.
The most basic model, steel case, no date, (this is actually the best version) goes for $8,950 at retail. And while I think this is actually pretty near value-for-money, safe to say that it’s not in your defense budget for standard issue anymore, unless you’re an oil emirate.
While you are unlikely to see one at retail anytime soon, unlike the Daytona, you can pick one up second hand at auction for something close-ish to sticker price if you hunt around—provided you aren’t too fussy about the year and model, and don’t mind some real wear and tear.
But here’s the thing, unless you have to have a Rolex to be happy, there are other, cooler, options for a lot less money.
When Rolex (along with Omega and most other Swiss brands) started dumping their military supply contracts at the end of the 1970s to focus on luxury production, the Royal Navy asked the English startup Cabot Watch Company to basically make their divers a MilSub to replace the Rolex, and they did, and it’s very bad ass.
The military stopped issuing mechanical watches in the 80s, but CWC still have the contract for special forces regiments like the SBS—though those guys tend to get quartz these days. For the average customer, they make their original automatic MilSub in batches. They are between production runs right now, but another is due out this year. While you can sign up in advance, they aren’t usually too hard to get. More to the point, they go for under $3K.
And if what you want is a fancy boy desk diver to play James Bond with, just get the Omega Seamaster heritage model—the Royal Navy used these too, it’s less than $7K at retail, and freely available second hand.
For my money, it's also just prettier than the Rolex Sub (no Mercedes hour hand!), and with a George Daniel master co-axial escapement in there, it’s the absolute best of technical Swiss watchmaking.
Let’s say you don’t want a Rolex to pretend you’re an F1 driver or an MI6 agent. Maybe you just want a really nice watch—nothing especially flashy, just something that is really good at telling the time and makes you absurdly happy when you look at it.
For a lot of people (JVL), that’s probably going to get you looking at the Oyster Perpetual.
It is, to be clear, a very, very, nice watch. The styling is classic and clean: simple handset, no date window or cyclops magnifier. And they even do them in funky colors now, if you’re into that sort of thing.
And with a $6,000 and change retail price this is perfectly good value-for-money—you can even get them on the gray market for under $10k.
I guess what I am saying is, if you just want to buy a Rolex, this is the Rolex to buy. But here’s the thing: don’t buy this Rolex.
The Grand Seiko Sōkō, named for the Japanese micro season marker of the first frost on the Arashiyama bamboo forest. The vertically textured, dark gray dial along with the pop of green on the second hand is gorgeously simple, and perfectly evocative. You can hear the wind in the bamboo looking at this thing, it’s a visual sedative.
And just look at the detailing on the power reserve indicator. I mean come on.
And GS’s zaratsu polishing on the case and hands is legendary: it’s hairline precise and absolutely mirror finished with zero distortion—and they do this by hand. Again, Rolex makes a nice case, but this is something else entirely. No one disputes this.
Bonus: It’s a Spring Drive—this thing basically keeps the most perfect time a watch is capable of keeping. This is just more watch—and for a thousand dollars less.
My money is where my mouth is on this one. If I ever have five large, this is the next watch I’m buying. Someday.
There’s a lot of reasons to want a Rolex. And there are a lot of Rolexes worth wanting. And I think I have been fair here—I am not saying you shouldn’t want one, or that they aren’t often value for money at retail.
I’m just saying, on balance, they aren’t worth the bullshit you have to go through to get the one you want 90 percent of the time. And, as often as not, there’s a better watch out there for a lot less.
If you just want a watch that looks as much like a Rolex as possible, doesn’t cost nearly as much, has a decent movement and an ugly hour hand, and people won’t give you shit about it being a knock off, skip all this and just buy a Tudor.
There’s no shame in that.
I hate how much I love the escapement. Well done.
Well done. Luckily, Rolex folks are Swiss. But Rolex ADs? You might want to let JVL start your car for the next few days. Just sayin'