What $380 Million at Monterey Says About Watches Right Now

The Luxury Watch Market in 2026: What Monterey Just Told Us

RM Sotheby's closed out Monterey Car Week 2026 with $380 million in sales, a record for that auction house's 29-year history at the event. Bidders showed up from 39 countries. Ninety percent of the cars sold. Sixty-nine of them went for over a million bucks. Two cleared $30 million.

You're reading a watch dealer's blog, so here's why you should care: the luxury watch market in 2026 is telling the same story the car market just told at Monterey, and it's not a subtle one. People with real money are done waiting in line for things that used to be exclusive. They're chasing the stuff that's actually still hard to get, and they're paying up for it without blinking. If you're trying to figure out where to put money into a watch this year — or whether now's even the time — that's the whole ballgame.

What Actually Happened at Monterey

Let's get the numbers right, because half the watch industry writes this stuff from a press release without checking it. RM Sotheby's alone did $380 million. Across every house at Car Week — Gooding, Bonhams, Broad Arrow, the rest — the total came in around $747.9 million for the week.

Ferrari owned the room. The brand took seven of the top ten results and accounted for more than $107 million of the action, including all six of its modern halo cars. The centerpiece was the 2026 Ferrari Luce "Tailor Made," a one-off sold for charity, which brought $40 million and became the most valuable new car ever sold at auction. Full stop. A brand-new car outsold most of the vintage stuff in the room.

And look, I have to say this because I'll never say it anywhere else and get away with it: the Luce is ugly and I don't care what it sold for. It's a toaster on wheels. That $40 million number is a charity number, not a market number — somebody wanted their name attached to a check that big, good for them, good for whatever cause got the money. But don't let anybody tell you that price reflects what the car is actually worth. Put that same Luce in a normal consignment with no cause attached and I don't think it hits retail, let alone $40 million. It's garbage. I wouldn't own one if you gave it to me.

Non-Ferrari highlight worth mentioning: a 1996 McLaren F1 GTR went for $34,655,000, a record for any McLaren F1 and for any British car ever sold at auction.

One quick clarification, because I get asked this constantly: RM Sotheby's has nothing to do with Richard Mille the watch brand. "RM" is Rob Myers, the classic car guy who started the auction house decades before Richard Mille sold his first tourbillon. Total coincidence of initials. I promise you there were more RM watches on wrists in that Monterey crowd than there were Richard Mille name-drops from the podium.

The Same Money Is Chasing AP, Vacheron, Richard Mille, and Patek

Cars and watches are drawing from the same wallet. The buyer writing an eight-figure check for a Ferrari at Pebble Beach isn't a different guy than the one calling me about a Royal Oak the following Tuesday. Same appetite, same instinct: buy what's actually scarce, skip what isn't.

Swiss Exports Are Up, and the U.S. Is Carrying It

The Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry put out its July numbers and exports rose 9.6% year over year to 2.63 billion francs. The U.S. did the heavy lifting — American demand was up 26.5% for the month. June was even stronger, up 11.2%. Japan slipped 3.7%, the UAE dipped a similar amount on Middle East disruption, but the U.S. is putting up numbers that make the rest of the world's dip a rounding error.

That's not a fluke month. That's American buyers, flush off a strong equity market, deciding this is the year to finally buy the piece they've wanted for a decade. I see it every week in my own inbox.

Royal Oak Prices Are "Rational" Now — Which Still Means Higher

The secondary market on the AP Royal Oak recovered in the first quarter of 2026, up 2.7%, and nearly every in-production reference is trading above retail again. A steel 15510ST with box and papers is running $55,000 to $65,000 against a retail price nowhere near that. Across the whole Royal Oak line, grey market pricing averages around $50,000, with the range running from about $7,000 on the small quartz references up past $600,000 for the serious complications.

Watch writers keep calling this market "rational" like that's a relief. It's rational in the sense that it's not the insane 2021 bubble anymore. It is not rational in the sense that a steel sports watch is worth what a nice house down payment used to be. Both things are true. Neither one means the price is coming down.

I'm not going to sit here and tell you a Royal Oak is an investment, because it's not, and anybody who tells you that is selling you something besides a watch. Most watches lose money the day you buy them. A handful hold value because the waiting list is real and the brand doesn't flood the market. That's not investment advice — that's just supply and demand, same as the Ferrari that sold for $40 million because there's exactly one of it.

Vacheron and Richard Mille Aren't Sitting Still Either

Vacheron Constantin rolled out a titanium Overseas Dual Time Cardinal Points this year, a platinum Overseas Ultra-Thin, and a run of Louvre Métiers d'Art pieces. None of that is cheap-and-cheerful territory. It's a brand telling you it knows exactly who its customer is and isn't chasing hype pieces to trend on some watch forum.

Richard Mille has put out five new references in 2026 so far, from the RM 41-01 Tourbillon Soccer in February to the RM 64-01 Tourbillon Colnago in June, a collaboration built around the Italian bike maker's racing pedigree. Richard Mille doesn't do Basel or Geneva trade shows. Never has. They launch on their own schedule, to their own people, and the rest of the industry just has to find out when everybody else does. That's a different kind of scarcity than "we didn't build enough factories" — it's a brand that never pretended it was for the masses in the first place.

Patek's Doing the Same Thing, Just Quieter About It

Patek Philippe turns 50 years old on the Nautilus this year and marked it the way Patek marks everything — understated, and expensive. Two limited-edition wristwatches and a companion clock, capped at 2,000 pieces, stripped back to hours-and-minutes-only with the in-house micro-rotor movement and a commemorative "50 1976 – 2026" engraving on the case back. The white gold ref. 5810/1G-001 retails at $75,019, and the early word from dealers is those pieces trade at 1.5 to 2 times retail within six months of delivery. The broader Nautilus line is up 2.8% in the first quarter of 2026 alone and 17.2% year over year.

Patek doesn't do collabs with bike makers or splashy soccer tie-ins. They don't need to. They put out two watches for an anniversary and the secondary market does the rest of the marketing for them.

Put AP, Vacheron, Richard Mille, and Patek next to each other and you get four different flavors of the same idea: real complications, real materials, real limited numbers, priced like it. Nobody's manufacturing a fake shortage. The shortage is just true.

Meanwhile, Rolex Keeps Raising Prices on Watches You Still Can't Buy

Now let's talk about the brand I'll never stop talking about. Rolex raised US prices again on January 1st, 2026 — the seventh straight year they've done it — with increases running 4% to 9% depending on the model and metal. A steel Submariner 124060 went from $9,500 to $10,050 overnight. Then in June, they came back for more: another 5% on gold pieces, 2.5% on two-tone.

So walk through that with me. You still can't walk into an AD and buy the steel sports model you actually want. You're still on a list, or buying jewelry you don't want to build "relationship" with a sales rep who treats you like you're asking for a favor. And on top of the wait, the price just went up. Twice. In one year.

That's the whole Rolex playbook and I've watched it for years: scarcity they manufacture on purpose, dressed up as prestige, sold to people who've been trained to think waiting is part of the luxury. Meanwhile AP, Vacheron, Richard Mille, and Patek aren't playing games with you at the counter. You want a Royal Oak, an Overseas, an RM, a Nautilus — you call somebody who actually has it, you pay a fair market number, you wear it that week. No waitlist theater. No guilt trip about your "purchase history."

I've said this in every version I know how to say it: Rolex is a great watch company that treats its own customers like they should be grateful just to be in the room. My guys who've made real money don't have time for that, and increasingly they're voting with their wallets. The export numbers back it up — the growth is happening in the U.S., where buyers have options and are choosing brands that don't jerk them around.

What This Actually Means If You're Buying This Year

Take Monterey and the export data together and the picture is simple. Money at the top of the market isn't drying up — it's getting pickier. It's moving toward brands and pieces where scarcity is real, not manufactured through an artificial waitlist, and it's moving away from brands that make you beg.

If you've been sitting on the sidelines waiting for AP, Vacheron, Richard Mille, or Patek prices to crater, I wouldn't hold my breath based on what the market's showing right now. Demand is coming from buyers who just watched a one-off Ferrari sell for $40 million and didn't blink — that's not a crowd that's price sensitive on a Royal Oak or a Nautilus.

If you've been chasing a Rolex allocation for two years and you're tired of the song and dance, you have options that don't require you to buy three watches you don't want first. I hear the same story on repeat: guy walks into an AD with cash, gets offered a Sky-Dweller he never asked for, walks out empty-handed, calls me instead. That's not a knock on the sales staff — that's the system Rolex built on purpose, and it works exactly as designed for them, just not for you.

And to be clear one more time, because I'll say it as many times as it takes: don't buy any of these thinking it's your retirement plan. A few pieces hold value because the math happens to work that way. Most don't. Buy what you actually want to wear, from somebody who'll tell you the truth about what it's worth, and you won't need a "strategy" to feel good about the purchase.

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