The Future of Watch Collecting

Why the most intelligent buyers are no longer asking “what is it worth?” — but “what does it mean?”

In November 2025, a phone bidder sat somewhere in the world — anonymously, as the best collectors prefer — and spent nine minutes and twenty-eight seconds in a war with four other bidders over a single watch. When the hammer fell, the stainless steel Patek Philippe Perpetual Calendar Chronograph Ref. 1518 from 1943 had achieved CHF 14,190,000 — the most expensive vintage Patek Philippe wristwatch ever sold at auction. The number is extraordinary. What it tells you about the market is more interesting still.

Geoff Hess, global head of watches at Sotheby’s, put it plainly after his own landmark sale: “The resurgence in vintage collecting is grounded in scholarship and emerging after a period dominated by modern pieces. Passion — not speculation — is driving the market.” That sentence is worth reading twice. Because it describes a fundamental shift in who is buying serious watches, and why.

The numbers behind the passion

The global secondary market for luxury watches reached $16.73 billion in 2025, a 36.4% increase from the year prior. At the very top, the numbers are even more striking: sales of watches exceeding $1 million reached 79 transactions in 2025, compared to 63 in 2024 — a 25.4% increase representing the most significant growth rate among all price tiers. Patek Philippe accounts for approximately 54% of those million-dollar transactions; Rolex for 22%.

Phillips Watches achieved its highest annual total in history in 2025 — US$370 million — marking its 10th anniversary year. The Decade One auction in Geneva achieved a 100% sell-through rate across all 207 lots, with 1,886 registered bidders from 72 countries. The audience for serious horology is not shrinking. It is deepening, globalising, and getting younger.

Asia-Pacific now holds the largest share of the luxury watch market, at 41.72% in 2024. Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo have become major nodes in the collector network — cities where a watch is understood not merely as an accessory but as a language.

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The collector’s mind vs. the investor’s calculator

Here is where the conversation gets genuinely interesting for those at the top of the market. The watches generating the most extraordinary returns are, almost without exception, the ones bought for reasons that had nothing to do with return.

Aurel Bacs, the most successful watch auctioneer in history and the man who presided over the Patek 1518 sale, has made this point repeatedly over the years. When asked what separates a collector from someone who simply owns many watches, Bacs answered: a collector buys “with his heart.” Those without the collector’s gene buy for practicality or vanity — a true collector nurtures both brain and heart. And elsewhere, more simply: “It’s a love affair, and you cannot put limits on love.”

In his own words: “A collector collects — whether it’s watches, stamps, wine or art — because he has that inner fire.”

The watches that carry that fire tend to be the ones that also carry value. The mechanism is not coincidental. A watch bought with genuine knowledge, genuine feeling, and genuine patience accumulates meaning alongside capital.

The independent revolution

The most revealing story in contemporary watch collecting is not about Rolex or Patek Philippe — though both remain the bedrock of any serious collection. It is about what is happening to independent watchmakers.

F.P. Journe achieved 176% of its high estimate across the 2025 auction season — up from an already exceptional 146% in 2024. Every other brand analysed, including Cartier, Vacheron Constantin and Patek Philippe, achieved lower ratios. The secondary market, which has no loyalty to heritage or marketing budget, is making a clear statement about where creative credibility now lives.

The numbers behind F.P. Journe are remarkable. The brand produces fewer than 1,000 pieces per year — far below global demand — and global appetite far exceeds the number of watches the manufacture is capable of producing. In December 2025, Francis Ford Coppola’s personal F.P. Journe FFC Prototype sold at Phillips New York for US$10,755,000 — setting a world record for any independent watchmaker at auction.

The watch had begun as a Christmas gift. Coppola’s wife had given him an F.P. Journe Chronomètre à Résonance in platinum in 2009. From that first piece grew a relationship — and eventually, a collaboration — between cinema’s greatest storyteller and watchmaking’s most uncompromising independent. Immediately following the record sale, Coppola’s original Chronomètre à Résonance achieved US$584,200 — nearly five times its low estimate. Provenance, in watches as in life, compounds.

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What intelligent collecting actually looks like

Mark Harvey, Head of Knight Frank’s International Department, describes what the most sophisticated buyers now look for across all asset classes: security, stability, a well-rounded lifestyle, and something that will endure beyond market cycles. Applied to watches, this maps precisely onto what the best collectors have always known: buy what you understand, buy what you love, and buy what no one else can easily replicate.

That means, in practice: a steel Patek Philippe with a complicated dial and documented provenance. An F.P. Journe from an early production run. A vintage Rolex Daytona with a “Paul Newman” dial in extraordinary original condition. Pieces that exist at the intersection of rarity, mechanical artistry, and a story worth telling.

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From 2017 to 2022, investing in a Patek Philippe watch could yield a 207% ROI. From 2018 to 2023, the price of sought-after Rolex watches surged by an average of 20% annually — outpacing the S&P 500. The numbers are persuasive. But Geoff Hess, who has handled more important watches than almost anyone alive, offers a better frame: “Watches don’t just tell time. No matter what part of the world you’re from, how young or how old, we all share the same passion for the details of our watches, the history they share.”

The future of watch collecting belongs to the people who understand that. Returns follow knowledge. Knowledge follows passion. And passion — the real kind — is very hard to fake.