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Thread: Rolex authorised preowned thing

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    El bot. geoffbot's Avatar
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    Rolex authorised preowned thing

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    Super Member Raza's Avatar
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    Honestly, it’s about ****ing time. Rolex, for far too long, has been the most faked watch company, with almost no counterfeiting countermeasure being effective for very long. Not only will this guarantee authenticity and give you a warranty, it should stabilize the market a bit because no longer will there be a waterfall effect race to the highest price. Rolex’s own pre-owned pricing will set a de facto ceiling for the majority of watches available. Et voilà, it also gives Rolex a slice of the robust secondary market that others were getting fat off and their plate remained empty.
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    Moderator - Central tribe125's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by geoffbot View Post
    Thoughts?

    Hard to see a downside if it works well. I guess the ADs will assess the buying-in price, possibly following Rolex guidance. The mechanics of that will be interesting.

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    Quote Originally Posted by tribe125 View Post
    From that article:

    "Think about it this way, if you are a Rolex AD and you buy a brand new GMT-Master II Pepsi ref. 126710BLRO on oyster bracelet from Rolex at 65% of its retail price —retail is $10,550 USD, therefore, AD cost is $6,858 USD—, why would you even entertain offering someone more than $5,000 USD for their preowned GMT-Master II Pepsi ref. 126710BLRO? In a perfect world, as an AD you’d be crazy to pay more than what you pay for a brand new one straight from Rolex."

    Hmm. Well, that only applies if you can GET a new Pepsi (in fact, as many as you need to satisfy local demand) from Rolex. Fat chance.

    I tend to agree this won't have a huge effect, except maybe at the high end of the most collectible vintage pieces. For me, if I wanted to buy a used Rolex, I would trust my local AD (who is not a Rolex AD) because given my relationship, if something went wrong, I know they'd make it right.

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    Super Member Raza's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by mlcor View Post
    From that article:

    "Think about it this way, if you are a Rolex AD and you buy a brand new GMT-Master II Pepsi ref. 126710BLRO on oyster bracelet from Rolex at 65% of its retail price —retail is $10,550 USD, therefore, AD cost is $6,858 USD—, why would you even entertain offering someone more than $5,000 USD for their preowned GMT-Master II Pepsi ref. 126710BLRO? In a perfect world, as an AD you’d be crazy to pay more than what you pay for a brand new one straight from Rolex."

    Hmm. Well, that only applies if you can GET a new Pepsi (in fact, as many as you need to satisfy local demand) from Rolex. Fat chance.

    I tend to agree this won't have a huge effect, except maybe at the high end of the most collectible vintage pieces. For me, if I wanted to buy a used Rolex, I would trust my local AD (who is not a Rolex AD) because given my relationship, if something went wrong, I know they'd make it right.
    I think the author of that article makes a few logical errors.

    (1) That the vast majority of Rolex secondhand buyers are not risk averse and that having a CPO option doesn’t change the risk assessment. Even if a buyer ends up staying in the gray market with a so called trusted seller like DavidSW, having a factory certified program changes the math. In the end, the people buying Rolexes don’t have money to spend on Rolexes because they’re in the habit of throwing Rolex money away on shady eBay purchases.

    (2) That Rolex ADs won’t welcome an additional revenue stream, especially in a time of global shortages and supply chain issues that compounded the Rolex bubble and their availability. He’s talking about the relative profit margins like Rolex dealers have to choose between a new sale and a CPO sale. Empty cases don’t sell watches. Maybe it’s only 15% instead of 35% (and I’d like to see some sourcing on these numbers; not that I don’t believe them, but I am inclined to believe it’s mere conjecture without a source, as secretive as Rolex is), but I think anyone in sales would rather sell two watches than one. It’s like the guy has never been to a car dealership that sells both used and new cars. Or a watch dealer that sells both used and new watches.

    (3) He doesn’t consider the value of an authenticity guarantee or a warranty at all.

    (4) As you mentioned, he doesn’t consider availability in his assessment.

    (5) The pool of reputable secondhand Rolex dealers may be “huge”, but none are as reputable as Rolex itself. When someone who isn’t Rolex guarantees that a Rolex is genuine, what is that guarantee worth? Not a whole lot. Their only credentials are word of mouth. Rolex is Rolex. Especially if we’re talking older and vintage models, where clear information is not always readily available.

    (6) People will pay a premium for ease of mind. Period. Rolex can charge more than DavidSW for the same product because of those guarantees that DavidSW can’t provide. And you’d be a fool to pay the same or more from a gray market seller as you would a Rolex CPO dealer.

    Seems like a lot of knee-jerk naysaying to me.
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    El bot. geoffbot's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Raza View Post
    Empty cases don’t sell watches.
    No, but logically every rolex salesperson (do they still exist?! I wouldn't bother. But hey McDonald's still spends billions on advertising so...) will have hit their sales target. The target can't include unavailable inventory (laughs in IT sales).
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    Hangaround member Fantasio's Avatar
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    At the moment I haven’t a clue. Availability of new watches and prices of used ones are so crazy, that I can not fathom how this will turn out.

    Basically I see this as a good and logical move, but with Rolex current hype one can’t assume things go as expected. Although usually they tend to play the business quite well.


    Quote Originally Posted by geoffbot View Post
    Thoughts?

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    El bot. geoffbot's Avatar
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    Rolex are opening a new factory to up production anyway https://www.watchpro.com/rolex-prepa...lion-facility/

    They have 4 factories at the moment but I doubt a fifth would increase production by 20% because


    Rolex currently has four major facilities in Switzerland: its administrative headquarters and assembly operation in Geneva; a factory in Plan-les-Ouates making watch cases and bracelets; Chêne-Bourg, which is responsible for dials, gem-setting, cerachrom bezels and bezel inserts; and Bienne is the beating heart of the operation to manufacture movements.
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    Hall Monitor Samanator's Avatar
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    Rolex authorised preowned thing

    Based on comments here is my issue. Key miss here is why would anyone trade in to a Rolex AD if they get much more everywhere else? Even the AD are charging premium for preowned. I would not do it. Now if they price match on trades and add the certification cost to their tag this could work. Personally, I’d like to see the certification service being offered to anybody but directly from Rolex. I don’t think I would need the other parts of the service.


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    Last edited by Samanator; Dec 4, 2022 at 08:43 PM.
    Cheers,

    Michael

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