Market Update

Prices continue to drift downwards, but Cartier defies the trend.

The Bloomberg Subdial Watch Index (BSWI) crept lower over July, with the GBP index closing down 2.6% for the month to £27,734. This continues the general trend of a cooling in prices across the most traded preowned luxury models, with that decline accelerating slightly compared to June. 

The volume of watches traded across the market has remained steady across July and near all-time high levels, as buyers were not deterred by prices declining. The number of watches listed on the market came down by 3% over the month, with summer holidays likely slowing the flow of new watches coming to the market.

Cartier Defies the Trend

While much of the watch market is drifting downwards, we wanted to look at what brands and categories were defying the trend. As we did, one clear answer emerged - Cartier. This is, however, a complicated choice. For some, Cartier is one of the pinnacles of design creativity. Throughout its century-long history, it has constantly innovated on what a watch can look like, drawing inspiration from unique and unexpected shapes.

At the same time, the Cartier Tank is just as iconic and enduring of a design as any Rolex or Patek. This means there is huge variation in market dynamics across Cartier designs. In fact, one could argue that Cartier isn’t one watch market, it’s actually two.

The Cartier Index

To start, let’s take a look at our Cartier Index. The Cartier Index is our tracking of 25 of the most popular and frequently traded Cartier references. These watches are lower in price point than the watches that make up the BSWI (averaging about £5,000) and are often in continuous production or large production runs.

The price of the Cartier Index is also far more stable than the BSWI. There are fluctuations as models come in and out of fashion, and we can see shifts in availability over time.

However, these watches generally show limited price volatility because the watches (or very similar models) are still in production. When a watch is readily available at retail, the retail price acts as a ceiling for the secondary market. It’s incredibly unlikely that an available watch would routinely trade above retail, with increases in demand instead pushing the price towards that limit.

The Cartier Index is down 2.5% for the year, but up 1.6% over the past month. This represents a strong performance and more stable index when compared to 7.4% decline for the year and 2.6% for the month in the BSWI.

Collectable Cartier

Of course, not all Cartier watches are consistently produced over the years. Whether for the brief life of Cartier Paris Collection Privee, which specialised in small, limited edition runs of either iconic or forgotten designs, or other limited or rare runs before or since, many Cartier designs are among the rarest and sought after in the watch world. Prices for these watches do not follow the same market dynamics as the Cartier Index. To understand pricing in the collectable market, we need to look at auction results.

We’ve collected sales records from major auction houses from across the world, allowing us to see different trends across various brands in the auction market.

Looking at this data we see that availability of auctionable Cartier has been relatively steady, with volumes available during the peak season of April-June being unchanged between 2022 and 2023.

However, when we look at prices there’s a clear shock. Median auction sales prices are down from approximately £75k to £30k, representing a 60% decline in achieved price

Auction data is necessarily based on a smaller sample, and is prone to variations in availability and timing of particular prestigious auctions. However, the scale of the decline shows a clear weakening in the price of rare Cartier

The Crash

Even within Cartier, one watch sits out both in the collectors’ minds and auction houses’ sales - the Cartier Crash. One of the most recognisable and sought after watches in the world, the auction data defies other collectable Cartier.

Prices for the Cartier Crash "Paris Dial" have declined a mere 8.5%, far stronger performance than other collectable Cartier watches.