Psst! Buddy! How'd You Like To Buy 8,290 Rolex Datejust Watches, CHEAP?
So, I've been on a bit of a watch-buying spree lately. Four in two weeks. A brown-dial Seiko 5 automatic, just to see what all the fuss is about among the cheap-time crowd. Today's my first day wearing it, and so far it seems nice, easily worth the $56.50 that I have in it. I also got a pair of Swatches: one from the shop in Vegas, at which point my brother told me about his Swatch that was much cooler than mine, so I got one of those too.
The fourth watch was a bit more of a "major" purchase, at least for a cash-poor prole-a-saurus like me, and put off the discussion about that until I can find a way to tell the story of how and why I bought it without sounding like a complete and utter tool. What's relevant here is that although I tried the watch on in the manufacturer's Vegas boutique, I ended up buying it from another source at about a 30% discount. I can't help it, I'm a natural-born bargain shopper, always have been, hate to pay retail, never buy in a mall, and so on.
A friend of mine who knows that I like nice watches and bargains pointed me towards the WOOT Rolex sale. Naturally, the minute I saw that "refurbished" "vintage" (oh, how I wish there was something stronger than a double quote to put around the use of the word "vintage" to describe a 1993 Rolex) Datejusts could be had for $3,200, I was off to eBay to see what they were really worth. And that's where I got a bit of a surprise, one that isn't just applicable to watches. Rolex, the company, is on a tear lately. Although they are hugely secretive about their production numbers, it's well-known, at or at least well-assumed, that they are producing slightly over one million watches a year. One million Rolexes a year. You might think that Justin Timberlake is popular, but he's got nothing on Rolex. There are 7.2 billion humans on Earth right now, so if you subscribe to the theory of the "1 percent", that's 72 million people, so one in 72 of those one-percenters gets a new Rolex every year. And they all want a Milgauss or a Submariner LV or a stainless Daytona. As a result, the prices for those particular pieces are starting to approach whatever comes after "unreasonable". The green-bezel Submariner LV was a $5,000 watch a few years ago; it's now $8,995 from an unauthorized dealer. The stainless Daytona is $12,995 without a warranty. We are this close to the day when you'll need a shopping basket full of devalued $100 bills to buy a watch, the way you had to buy bread during the final days of the Weimar Republic.
It would be easy to see this unprecedented production volume and real-world pricing as a complete validation of the Rolex brand and the company's current philosophy. Which it is; it just isn't a validation of anything real. Consider, if you will, the technical reasons why Rolex is superior to many other Swiss watches. They make their own mainsprings, which is rare. The mechanical excellence of their in-house movements is beyond question, as is the package of upgrades they apply to externally sourced movements. (The Daytona, as an example, only became a "100% Rolex" a few years ago. Prior to that, it was a Zenith El Primero in a really nice case. More information here.) The cases are made to standards of extreme precision. The hands of most Rolex watches are made from solid gold. There's real excellence there.
Yet all of those same complimentary things can be said about the Rolex that was responsible for the brand's initial worldwide success, the Oyster Perpetual Datejust. Oyster, because it has the famous watertight case. Perpetual, because it's self-winding. Datejust, because it shows the date. Unless you work in an area with extremely strong magnetic fields, or you spend a lot of time fifty fathoms deep, the Datejust is basically the same watch as a Milgauss or a Submariner. (The Daytona is a chronograph, but nobody actually uses the chronograph function to time anything, not in the era of light-beam timing systems.) So if a used Submariner LV or Milgauss fetches six grand easy, how much is a "vintage" Datejust worth?
The answer is: not much. eBay currently has about 240 stainless Daytonas listed, none for under nine thousand bucks. The Datejust, on the other hand, can be found in much greater numbers: well over 8,300 as of a few minutes ago, including the bargain that heads up this article. Most of them have "Buy It Now" prices that aren't met. A search of actual completed auctions returns relatively few results. Over eight thousand Rolexes that nobody really wants, even at a thousand dollars or so.
Mechanically, these watches are just as good as the popular ones. They are just "old-fashioned". So nobody wants them, particularly in an era where "dress watches" like the Datejust have been replaced by "sport watches". You know, because it's critical for you to have 100m diving capability or magnetic resistance while you're sitting in a New York office building. It's easy to be a Rolex owner. You need two thousand dollars, or less. But don't expect anybody to have any genuine interest in, or respect for, what you're wearing. Unless that person is an actual watch geek who understands just how good an old Datejust is.
The final indignity is this: the two-tone gold-and-stainless versions are worth less than the all-steel ones. This, in an era where Obamadollars need to be stacked a foot high to buy an ounce of gold. How long until you can buy half-gold Rolexes for melt value? Not long, methinks. Might be a smart buy.
So, watches aside, what does this mean in the greater context? One, that it would be unwise to bet than any manufactured item, even a Rolex, will appreciate in value or even match inflation. Don't be fooled by Daytona mania. Today's Daytona is the Datejust of 2025.
Two, that Swiss watch fans don't really care about mechanical excellence or anything like that. The vast majority of them are fashion followers. It gives the lie to many of the hobby's underlying principles and suggests that Rolexes are actually no more intrinsically valuable than Pokemon cards.
Three, that if you really want a decent, long-lasting, reliable watch at a reasonable price, you could go buy a Datejust and have my complete respect, at least.
Four, that the supply of "luxury goods" is outpacing demand and will likely continue to do so as economies tumble and globalization turns us all into the Pakistani bricklayers of Neal Stephenson's brilliant phrase. The day will come when there aren't enough rich people to buy the rich people stuff. Which means that it will be sold to poor people, or not sold at all. So hold on: the day's coming when you'll be able to dig in the dirt for worms to eat, wearing a Rolex Datejust. Or --- let's face it --- a Submariner LV. What time is it? Worm-digging time!