Secondary Watch Market Report H1 2025.

01 Why it matters.

Chrono24 is the world’s largest online marketplace for luxury watches — and its semi-annual market reports provide the most granular, transaction-based data available on the secondary watch market. The H1 2025 report is particularly significant: it confirms Rolex’s 34.2% share of global secondary luxury watch transaction volume, documents the market’s correction from 2022 speculative peaks to a normalised level of elevated demand, and provides the clearest available evidence for the secondary market as a metric of primary brand health.

For The Codes of Luxury, Chrono24’s data is the empirical foundation of our argument that the secondary market is not a sideshow to the primary luxury market — it is its most honest signal. A brand whose watches trade at persistent premiums above retail, in high volume, with stable prices, is a brand that the market trusts. Rolex’s secondary market dominance is the most direct quantitative evidence available for the brand’s structural position.

02 Key takeaways.

1. 01 Rolex accounts for 34.2% of global secondary luxury watch transaction volume — by far the largest share of any single brand.
2. 02 The secondary watch market corrected from 2022 speculative peaks but remains at historically elevated levels of transaction volume and average selling price.
3. 03 Core Rolex steel sports models (Submariner, Daytona, GMT-Master II) maintain 38–131% premiums above retail even after the correction.
4. 04 The correction is better understood as normalisation from speculative excess to structural demand — not as a decline in brand value.
5. 05 Secondary market performance is a leading indicator of primary market sentiment: secondary prices often signal consumer confidence shifts before earnings calls do.

03 Used in our research.

1. 01 Case StudyRolex: The Grammar of Permanence
2. 02 Case StudyHermès and the Resale Market: What the Premium Compression Really Means
3. 03 InsightJewelry Is the New Handbag: Why the Category Is Winning the Decade