Swatch

GDB2222

I see that there are crowds outside Swatch shops, trying to get hold of a £300 watch. I see Swatch watches on eBay with asking prices of £2500. Are they the same watches? Are people really that daft as to pay nearly 10 times list prices?

Grumpy_chap

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6668737/swatch

Yes.

According to BBC these watches are achieving £16k.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c302vjqz563o

Or, you can wait a couple of weeks.

If you are a risk taker, list a watch today and sell for ££££££ and then buy one to ship once the store has them .

Emmia

The watches in question are a collaboration with a posh watch brand Audemars Piguet- whose watches start at £2k a piece.

Yes, people will pay the £2k+ mark up, and I expect most people in the queues are buying to resell...

vacheron

You would probably be pushed to get a decent Audemars Piguet for under 10 grand these days to be honest.

I’ve owned a couple of AP’s in my time and they are lovely watches but the influencer culture has now hyped them up to the point where the costs have skyrocketed and they are now primarily bought and sold as investments by people who don’t understand or appreciate them to the point where I’m just not interested anymore.

This is just a continuation of the collaborations Swatch did initially with Omega and then with Blancpain. Every time people lose their minds in the rush to buy a £300 cheap plastic watch with the same movement that swatch put in their £50 watches just because it has a prestigious Swiss name on the front.

There is some logic in the thought process that you can at least wear something that is an homage to the genuine brand and isn’t a fake, I guess.

the double irony was the far east very soon started making fakes of the plastic swatch versions of the prestigious versions. 🤦‍♂️😂

The crazy thing is none of these have ever been limited edition runs but based on the success of the Omega versions and the amount of people were managing to resell them for silly money, my guess would be that 80-90% of the people in the queue are hopeful flippers, but there just aren’t that many people willing to pay genuine AP money for a secondhand plastic “homage’ just to get it quickly, none in fact!, but if they’re lucky and they list/sell fast they might double or even triple their money in the next two weeks. But if they over-price it and it hasn’t shifted by then, their party is probably over. 🤷‍♂️

Grumpy_chap

This is just a continuation of the collaborations Swatch did initially with Omega and then with Blancpain. Every time people lose their minds in the rush to buy a £300 cheap plastic watch with the same movement that swatch put in their £50 watches just because it has a prestigious Swiss name on the front.

I understand that Swatch Group own Omega and Blancpain so not really just a "collaboration".

I wonder what is in the deal for AP to lend their name to the Swatch product? Maybe we will see something more develop between the two businesses?

vacheron

Yes, it was certainly a surprise to me…. I thought it was an AI fake when I first saw it! 🤪

To me, AP have always been a proudly independently owned company and very protective of their brand reputation so I don’t see what they had to gain from jumping on this bandwagon, especially with the Swatch group owning a number of arguably completing brands, the closest probably being Glashütte Original as Breguet are generally purchased by a very different type of customer.

There has to be something in the deal that appealed to them though, hopefully time will reveal their thought process.

MikeJXE

Yes some people are that daft to pay 10 times the price

Also some people are that greedy to ask for it

vacheron

Those that are paying the really high RRP multiples initially can often be reviewers and watch websites who can write the cost off as a business expense and make their money back by being first to market with their hands on reviews (or wealthy people who value the bragging rights more than the money).

Also, some very high value sales are often bought by people with no intention of purchasing but it hypes the price of their offering and temporarily takes a competing unit off the market.

As with previous Swatch colabs these can only be purchased in certain stores, not online, so there is a premium if you are unable (or can't be bothered) to go to your nearest large city that is selling them and queue for hours.

A quick eBay check of actual sold items shows that only 2 units sold for £5K in the very early days. After that just 8 actual sales the price is down to £2k, and hundreds are now selling for £600-£1000.

Give it a couple of weeks to weed out the suckers (on both sides of the sale), and we'll see where the price has settled. 🙂

flaneurs_lobster

Was intrigued that the collab (sorry) has produced a pocket-watch form, although given that it can be matched with a longer lanyard I guess you would wear it around your neck as a pendant (if at all),

Watch pockets/waistcoats are not seen very often, and would generally not be filled with something pink, plastic with 'Royal Pop' written across it, but I'm sure the practicalities of using the thing to tell the time is certainly not the point.

For anyone interested in "why" such a mash-up might have happened there's this piece from Forbes

https://www.forbes.com/sites/claraludmir/2026/05/15/should-haute-horlogerie-collide-with-pop-culture-audemars-piguet-seems-to-think-so/