Ladies First

Audemars Piguet just sold its first piece of jewellery with no watch inside, three days after Patek launched a gold quartz watch for women. Two houses that rarely agree made the same bet in the same week

Patek Philippe made seven watches you can only buy in Italy, and last week we asked which one to watch. The answer is not the rarest one

A unique F.P. Journe sold for about $3.4 million, and we finally have the number we promised you on Wednesday

Breitling's new boss called his 140 year old company "a startup", and he meant it as a plan

The biggest Rolex retailer in Britain is quietly becoming a jeweller

The voice of Bugs Bunny owned a Patek, and it is being sold in Dubai this week

Wednesday's midweek issue carries our biggest market call yet

Which Milan Patek to watch.

Last week we asked which of Patek's seven Italian editions is the one to watch. Our answer: the steel Aquanaut, the 5167A-014.

Why not the rarest. The two World Time Minute Repeaters and the red 7047G exist in fives. That is extraordinary, but watches made in fives go to the very top clients, people who have bought from Patek for decades and who almost never sell. A watch that never changes hands has no market. It will appear at auction once in a generation, set a headline, and disappear again.

Why the Aquanaut. Three reasons.

First, steel is what trades. The secondary market for Patek is driven by its steel sports watches, the Nautilus and the Aquanaut, the rubber-strapped younger sibling launched in 1997. According to the second-quarter Morgan Stanley and WatchCharts report, the Aquanaut collection trades at an average of 90% above its retail price, more than any other Patek line, ahead of the Nautilus at 74%. The Calatrava, Patek's classic dress watch, trades 34% below retail. Same brand, opposite markets.

Second, 250 is the right number. Five is too few to form a market. Thousands is too many to be scarce. Two hundred and fifty is enough that some will change hands, and few enough that every one of them will be noticed.

Third, Italy-only adds friction. Every buyer outside Italy has to travel, or pay someone who did. Friction is what keeps a scarce watch scarce.

What would make us wrong. If Patek sells the 5167A-014 mainly to established Italian collectors who keep it, it may barely trade. And if steel sports prices soften in general, this watch will soften with them. More on that on Wednesday.

What it means for you.

Buying: if one is offered to you in the next few months, the first resale prices will tell you more than any estimate. Do not pay the first premium you see.

Owning a standard Aquanaut: special editions of a line tend to lift attention on the standard models too. No need to act, but no reason to sell cheaply either.

AP's chief executive: changing the brand, or growing it?

Ilaria Resta, who took over as Audemars Piguet's chief executive in 2024 and is the first woman to run the house, has spent the past year steering AP towards women in a way it never has before:

the 23mm Royal Oak Mini, revived in Frosted Gold,

the Royal Oak Chronograph made with Serena Williams, in white ceramic with a pink mother-of-pearl dial, released on 21 September,

and now Royal Oak Joaillerie, jewellery with no watch in it at all.

The question is whether she is turning AP into a different brand, or making the same brand bigger. Our answer: bigger, not different. Here is why.

Reason one: the jewellery uses the Royal Oak. Every piece is built from the Royal Oak's bracelet and finishes. A brand that wanted to change who it is would launch something new. A brand that wants to sell its most famous design to more people does exactly this. AP itself describes the collection as complementing Royal Oak watches, not replacing them.

Reason two: the margin. As we showed last week, at Richemont, the group that owns Cartier and Vacheron Constantin, the jewellery business keeps about 30 cents of profit from every dollar of sales, while the watch business keeps about three. Jewellery needs no movement, fewer watchmakers and no waiting lists. For any watch brand, jewellery is the most profitable square metre in the shop.

Reason three: it was asked for. The reports say the collection began with requests from existing clients and was shown to a small group of them before launch. That is not a rebrand. That is selling a second thing to people who already bought the first.

What about the stakeholders? AP is private and family owned. There are no outside shareholders demanding quarterly growth. The people Resta answers to are the founding families, and what families care about most is that the name is still worth something in fifty years. So the pressure on her is not to grow at any cost. It is to grow without making the Royal Oak ordinary.

And that is the risk. The Royal Oak's value comes from being hard to get. A Royal Pop at $400, a choker at $57,000 and a ceramic chronograph with a tennis star's name on it all put the octagon in more places. Every new place is a new customer, and also a little less mystery.

What it means for you.

Steel Royal Oaks: no direct effect. Different buyers, different price points.

Gem-set and ladies' Royal Oaks on the secondary market: these have historically been priced on their gold and stones and the name, not on scarcity, and they usually trade below retail. Jewellery buyers do not flip. That does not change.

If you buy the jewellery: buy it to wear. Jewellery holds its value through the gold and stones, not through a waiting list.

Watch companies are trying not to be watch companies.

Put this week's moves side by side.

Audemars Piguet launched jewellery with no watch inside.

Patek Philippe launched a gold quartz watch whose appeal is the shape and the gold, not the movement.

Watches of Switzerland, the biggest Rolex retailer in Britain, opened a store that is half jeweller and is growing jewellery faster than watches.

Breitling is turning one brand into three.

Louis Vuitton, a fashion house, is making watches permanent and pricing them against Cartier.

Five companies, one direction: away from depending on the mechanical watch alone.

Why it is happening. Three forces at once.

Margin. Jewellery keeps ten times the profit of watches at Richemont. Everybody has seen that number.

Supply. The watches people want most, steel Rolexes, Pateks and APs, are rationed. A retailer or a brand cannot grow by selling more of them, so it grows by selling something next to them.

The customer. The fastest-growing buyers are not collectors who want a column-wheel chronograph. They want an object with a famous shape and a famous name. That buyer is as happy with a necklace as with a watch.

The consequence nobody is saying out loud. If the most profitable thing a watch brand sells stops being a watch, the brand starts being run by people who think like jewellers. Fewer complicated new movements, more gold, more stones, more shapes. For collectors who love mechanics, that could make genuinely new watchmaking scarcer, and the independents who still do it, the Journes and the Voutilainens, more valuable. Which is exactly what the auction results are already saying.

What to do with it.

Collecting mechanics: the independents are where the watchmaking is. Their prices already reflect it, so buy what you love, not what is trending.

Buying a big brand: the watch with a genuinely new movement inside will become rarer than the one with a new dial.

Selling: nothing to do yet. This is a slow shift, not a cliff.

31% is Rolex's share of watch sales on Chrono24, the world's largest online marketplace for luxury watches, by mid-2026. In early 2022 it was about 44%.

Why it is true. Buyers have spread their money across more brands since the 2022 peak, and much of the growth this year has come from cheaper watches: in August, the biggest movers in the WatchCharts price index were Omega, TAG Heuer and Tudor models, each up about 4%.

One honest caveat. Some Rolex trading has moved to Rolex's own Certified Pre-Owned programme, sold through authorised dealers, which has more than doubled this year. So part of that drop is Rolex buyers changing where they shop, not leaving.

What it means for you. Rolex is still the biggest single brand by far. But the market is less dependent on one name than at any point in the last five years, which makes it healthier and harder to read at the same time.

+15.4% and -27.4% are how far above and below their retail price Patek Philippe and Cartier watches trade on average, according to the latest Morgan Stanley and WatchCharts report.

Only three brands trade above retail on average: Patek at +15.4%, Rolex at +9.8% and AP at +3.0%. Below them, Cartier at -27.4%, Vacheron Constantin at -37.2% and IWC at -37.9%.

Why it matters. The difference is mostly about steel sports watches. The three brands above the line make the steel sports models everyone wants and nobody can get. The brands below it sell mostly precious metal and dress watches, which buyers can walk in and buy.

What it means for you. If you buy a Cartier or a Vacheron, you are buying it to wear, and you can usually buy it secondhand for far less than in the boutique. If you buy a steel Patek, Rolex or AP, you are buying into a market. What happens to that market next is exactly what Wednesday's issue is about. The next Morgan Stanley report is due in mid-October.

About 10% is how far gold fell in September, from about $4,600 an ounce at the end of August to about $4,150 by 29 September, after the US central bank raised interest rates for the first time since 2023. It is still up about 9% on a year ago.

Why it matters. Rolex raised its gold watch prices twice this year, by up to 9% in America in January and about 5% worldwide in June, largely because gold kept climbing. Watch prices go up with gold. They almost never come down with it.

What it means for you. If you are shopping for a gold watch secondhand, a falling gold price gives you a little more leverage with a seller. If you are waiting for a brand to cut its prices because gold fell, do not hold your breath. We found no price rises announced yet for the rest of the year, but January is when they usually arrive.

Figures converted from Swiss francs, euros and pounds sterling at approximate current rates.

Monday 5 October, James Bond Day. Omega's new Seamaster Diver 300M James Bond edition, reference 210.30.42.20.03.004, is expected to be revealed.

Wednesday 7 October. Our midweek issue, with our biggest market call yet on sports-model watches.

Until Friday 9 October, Phillips New York online. About 90 lots in what Phillips calls its New York team's most valuable online watch sale ever. The top lot is not a Rolex or a Patek. It is a Kari Voutilainen 28Sport, by the Finnish independent watchmaker, estimated at $120,000 to $240,000.

Mid-October. The next Morgan Stanley and WatchCharts report on secondary prices.

Until 18 October, Milan. The Patek Philippe Watch Art Grand Exhibition at CityOval.

Sunday 18 October, New York. Antiquorum, the Geneva auction house, returns to the US with a sale that includes eight F.P. Journe watches, among them a platinum Centigraphe Souverain with a salmon dial. Eight Journes in a single sale tells you how much more of the brand is now reaching the market.

Around 20 October. Swiss export figures for September.

Saturday 7 November, Geneva. The GPHG, the watch industry's annual awards, and the Phillips Geneva sale the same weekend.