@UrAWizHarry
"They don’t depreciate, they appreciate. That’s why they’re an investment."
Some do, it VERY much depends on the model, the year it was made, the vagarities of fashion and a whole heap of other factors. It's not as simple as "it's a rolex, it'll definately appreciate" so it's a dangerous statement to make if you aren't careful.
This is one of a small number of posts on the thread that I find genuinely interesting, because the poster isn’t parroting the “It’s a Rolex, it will ALWAYS go up in value” and “go for it, your money your choice!”, which we’ve seen approximately 200 variants of.
One of the things that would put me off buying an item - it’s rather a stretch to describe a Rolex watch as an asset, much less a commodity - is the fact that everyone is talking up their value.
It makes me think of ‘tulip fever’ or, more prosaically, wretched beanie babies.
All of the ingredients are there: artificially limited supply, the conviction that it’s impossible to lose money on one, the almost incredible story about a Patek Philippe watch being sold for 10x list price because they are seemingly so rare, having to be in the know before you are permitted to buy one, the emperor’s new clothes aspect of the mechanics of the thing (eg, paraphrasing, if you don’t have a refined appreciation of Swiss precision engineering you will never be one of the cognoscenti who are smart enough to spend £30k on a watch, and £6k is nothing!).
Of course, unless the watch is made of a precious metal or has gemstones its intrinsic value is sod all: scrap value. The value that the watch supposedly holds after you buy it is all in the strength of people’s desire to wear them, and that is all about the impression they think a Rolex gives (“I’ve made it, me! Check out my watch!”). I don’t believe that most people buying Rolexes do so because they are fans of Swiss engineering.
We all know, if we think about it, that assets go up and down in value all the time. Look at the trajectory of gold prices over the past 50 years, for example. If assets and commodities only ever went up, there would be no futures markets.
So I wouldn’t be buying a Rolex at the moment if everyone is convinced that they ‘only ever appreciate in value’. The expectation of future price rises is probably already built into an inflated secondhand cost. A PP suggested that Rolexes are a hedge against low interest rates. Let’s see what happens when rates rise. Or when Rolex wearing trickles down to people who aren’t seen as aspirational, which has already started. Rolex will be keen not to ‘do a Burberry’, which is why they limit new watch supply. It might not work.