At what point is the watch resell market?

If these last few months have taught us anything, it is that anything can fall prey to resell. If in the beginning, it was only sneakers and hype culture, in the last period we have witnessed the explosion of the Pokémon cards market, up to the latest phenomenon of the moment with the resell of invitations for Clubhouse. If there is demand, there is supply, it is the law of the market applicable to any field, especially that of watches. A world that has been alive and active for years, but which has had a significant increase in the last period, as confirmed by Federico Bagnetti, CEO of Wanted Watch: "In the past, luxury watches were bought for the simple pleasure of wearing them. The choice was made. based on a purely subjective taste and often to legitimize a status symbol, which is why there were many brands taken into consideration. Today, the selection criteria are profoundly modified, the area is limited to only a few brands and models, with great attention to the possibility of a financial return on the investment which, above all in the current economic/social context, we see happening on time." 

What Bagnetti rightly calls a "safe haven" has not seen any contraction or decline during the pandemic, which in fact, as with the Pokémon card market, has increased numbers and sales in watch reselling. The main reason is to be found in the difficult availability of some models, but also from the moment of stagnation in the world of sector events and fairs that have moved the mechanisms of the market from the physical meeting place to the more virtual one. A growth that seems to confirm a clear trend, the one that since 2000 has shown a market in sharp growth and able to embrace a heterogeneous group of enthusiasts and buyers, effectively sanctioning one of the many differences between the resell of sneakers and that of watches. "I could say that the similarities are many, however, there is no 'substantial' difference. The markets could be compared, but in the first analysis the spending is clearly different on the basis," said Federico Bagnetti. "In any case, we are talking about non-comparable objects such as manufacture and intrinsic value. In watches we have metals, and precious stones, sophisticated mechanisms from the engineering point of view, in sneakers the factor is linked to the hype in the strictest sense of the term itself, that is an increase in the value linked to marketing strategies, not proportional to the value of the materials used. But the difference that I most feel to highlight is that while the second wristwatch market is more in demand and sees a growing value, the same does not we can say that sneakers are "used" rather than never worn."

The distance between the world of watches and hype culture emerges even more from the data from StockX, careful to photograph a trend that separates streetwear from the world of luxury watches. Despite a sharp increase in Rolex sales, the Casio remain the most purchased watches in the streetwear world, with a growth of 130% from 2019 to 2020. In particular the G-SHOCK models, especially thanks to collaborations such as John Mayer and Dragon Ball, they managed to occupy eight out of ten positions in the ranking of the best-selling watches in 2020 on the site, with the Casio G-Shock - 45mm in Resin in the first place, followed by the other trend of the hype world: the Apple Watches. A fact that seems to clearly separate two distant worlds for investments, but above all for durability and growth in value over time. The only point of contact may exist in a streetwear subculture born in recent years and daughter of hype culture, where the luxury of Gucci tracksuits meets Nike x Off-White sneakers, transforming the watch into a simple accessory to appear, depriving it therefore of its importance and its historicity. If the sneaker reselling market lives the eternal variable of hype, monthly releases and trends dictated by the big names in the market, on the other hand, that of watches seems to be a market rooted in values ​​and traditions, more aware of the importance of what it sells and therefore inevitably destined for continuous and natural growth.