Is Rolex Shorting the Market of New Watches to Drive Its Certified Pre-Owned Program?

To answer our question, we spoke with several watch industry experts, including two people with first-hand experience in Rolex ’s authorized retail enterprises (both of whom chose to remain anonymous). Rolex declined to comment . In our recent article about the near impossibility of purchasing a new Rolex Daytona , we concluded with this question: Is Rolex shorting the new market to compel customers to buy from its new Certified Pre-Owned program ? This seemed a fair, if somewhat cynical, question to ask after multiple authorized Rolex dealerships offered us little hope for a new Daytona while simultaneously directing us to pre-owned Daytonas at twice the retail price.

However, the Daytona is uniquely hard to get, and for that reason it is also uniquely expensive on the pre-owned market. An expert watch collector and watch industry veteran (who prefers anonymity) didn’t mince words: “Daytona production is artificially reduced. Rolex wants that one hard-to-get watch, and they’ve done that with the Daytona since 1988.

” (In 1988, Rolex released the first auto-winding Daytona reference 16520 .) They add, “A brand has to have that one watch that’s hard to get.” As such, seeking out a new Daytona is an especially disheartening experience.

And yet, it is also nearly impossible to get any Rolex watch new at retail any time soon . The ubiquitous scarcity makes shopping at a Rolex boutique (if we can call even it shopping) both frustrating and surreal. They offer you a .