Watch depreciation by brand

Almost every watch you can buy new is worth less the day after you buy it, and most keep drifting downward for years. That is the ordinary case and it is not a scandal. This page sets out how much, brand group by brand group, in ranges. The figures are indicative for 2026, they are measured against US list prices before sales tax, and they move with market conditions, currency and how heavily a brand is discounted where you live.

Two warnings before the numbers. First, all of them are ranges because resale genuinely varies by tens of percent with condition, completeness and whether you sell privately or to the trade. Second, the base matters: a brand that routinely sells at 25 percent below list depreciates against the price people actually pay, not the published one. Our depreciation guide explains the mechanics.

The rule, and the handful of exceptions

The rule is that a new mechanical watch from a mainstream brand resells for roughly 40 to 70 percent of what it cost, once it is a few years old and in good condition with its box and papers. Quartz watches and entry-level mechanicals do worse, often much worse.

The exception is loud enough to drown out the rule. A small number of steel sports references have traded at or above retail for stretches of the last decade. Those are the watches people photograph and argue about, so buyers generalize from them. They are a rounding error in a market that ships millions of watches a year, and planning a purchase around joining them is a bad plan, as our answer on whether watches hold their value sets out.

What actually drives resale

In descending order of how much they matter:

1. Supply against demand for the specific reference. Decisive. Everything else is detail.
2. How heavily the brand is discounted new. If a watch is routinely available at 30 percent off, the second-hand market prices against that lower number, and the drop from list looks catastrophic when it is really a pricing artifact.
3. Liquidity. How quickly you can sell at all. A brand with a thin market may hold a good percentage on paper and take six months to shift.
4. Condition and completeness. Box, papers, an unpolished case and a documented service history are worth real money on the brands where resale exists.
5. Movement quality and finishing. Genuinely last. The market barely pays for it.

Brand by brand, in bands

Rolex and the steel sports exception

Current steel sports references from Rolex, the Submariner and GMT-Master II among them, have generally traded close to or above list price, because authorized supply has been well below demand for years. That is a supply condition, not a property of the metal. The same brand's Datejust and Oyster Perpetual models are usually available below new retail, and gold and gem-set references lose substantially.

Two honest caveats. The secondary market for these references peaked in 2022 and corrected sharply afterwards, so anyone who bought at the top has lost money on a watch that "holds value". And a watch bought on the gray market at above list has already given the premium away. Our answer on whether a Rolex is an investment works through the arithmetic.

Omega, Tudor, Cartier and the strong second tier

Omega references commonly trade at roughly 55 to 75 percent of list for a recent example in good condition, with the manual-wind Speedmaster Professional the steadiest and the Seamaster 300M close behind. Tudor sits in a similar band, with the smaller Black Bay 58 at the firm end. Cartier steel Tank and Santos models hold better than the brand's reputation among mechanical enthusiasts would suggest, because the demand comes from outside that group.

This tier is where the pre-owned case is strongest: the discount is large enough to matter and the market is liquid enough that you can sell again. Work through the pre-owned checks first.

The Swiss mid-market

Longines, Oris, TAG Heuer and Breitling all behave similarly: liquid second-hand markets, predictable discounts, and returns commonly in the 40 to 65 percent band. TAG Heuer sits at the lower end of that because discounting on new stock is heavy, so the market prices against a number well below list. Zenith and Panerai lose more, and in Zenith's case that is a market indifference to genuinely good movements rather than any fault in the watches.

Nomos and Sinn both have devoted followings concentrated in German-speaking markets. Sell one there and the discount is moderate. Sell one elsewhere and it is steeper and slower.

Below that, Tissot, Certina and Hamilton return roughly 40 to 70 percent of new, with the PRX and the small Khaki Field cases at the firm end. The percentages look ordinary and the absolute losses are small, which is the more useful way to think about it: losing 45 percent of an $800 watch is $360.

Japanese brands

Grand Seiko commonly resells 30 to 45 percent below list, which is worse than its Swiss equivalents and is the reason pre-owned Grand Seiko is good value. The cause is brand age outside Japan and a smaller buyer pool, not the watchmaking, which is excellent.

Mainstream Seiko mechanicals typically trade at half of list or less, with Prospex holding a little better. The famous counter-example is the discontinued SKX007, which trades above what it cost new. That is a collector effect on a withdrawn reference, not a rule you can apply to the Seiko 5 Sports you buy today. Orient resells for a fraction of retail. Citizen and Casio quartz should be assumed to lose almost all of their value immediately, which is what quartz does across the whole market.

Microbrands and direct sellers

Direct-to-customer brands such as Christopher Ward face a structural problem that has nothing to do with quality. Second-hand prices are set relative to what a buyer would otherwise pay new. When the new price is low, public and openly promoted, there is very little room underneath it, so the percentage drop is steep even on a well-made watch.

Smaller microbrands are worse again: limited name recognition, thin buyer pools and, for defunct brands, no parts. Buy them because the watch is good and you intend to keep it. If you might sell within a few years, this is the wrong category.

What to do with this

If resale genuinely matters to you, there are only three honest moves. Buy pre-owned and let somebody else absorb the first drop. Buy one of the small number of references with demonstrated demand, accepting that the demonstration is historical and the market corrected once already. Or buy cheaply enough that the loss is not worth thinking about, which is what most sensible owners actually do.

If resale does not matter to you, ignore all of it and buy the watch you will wear, then keep the box, the papers and the receipts anyway, because they cost nothing to store and they are worth money later. When the time comes, our guides to selling a watch and finding out what your watch is worth cover the mechanics. And before any purchase, put a pessimistic resale assumption into the cost of ownership calculator, because the number that decides what a watch costs you is the one at the end, not the one on the tag.