Can you feel it? When hammer at Monaco Legend Group Auction falls for the first time, the Fall auction season is finally upon us! Top lots, rare items and unique stories are waiting on every rostrum over the coming month. But since the MLG auction came to a close this weekend let's have a closer look at how the auction went... what is trending and selling like hot cakes, what is sitting on the shelves? And before you start it - yes the auction world is a micro-cosmos highlighting a very particular set of watches but with all caveats considered can still grant us insights into the market. And since we're speaking about MLG we will learn something about the state of vintage market in particular. Buckle up, this'll be fun!
October 23, 2024
Cartier Mania!? And More Takeaways from the Monaco Legend Group Auction
Marcus Siems @siemswatches
Collector, Author, Data Analyst
Can you feel it? When hammer at Monaco Legend Group Auction falls for the first time, the Fall auction season is finally upon us! Top lots, rare items and unique stories are waiting on every rostrum over the coming month.
But since the MLG auction came to a close this weekend let's have a closer look at how the auction went... what is trending and selling like hot cakes, what is sitting on the shelves? And before you start it - yes the auction world is a micro-cosmos highlighting a very particular set of watches but with all caveats considered can still grant us insights into the market. And since we're speaking about MLG we will learn something about the state of vintage market in particular. Buckle up, this'll be fun!
An Omega Constellation ref. 2943 - a watch we handle quite a lot ourselves, yet not at all in this configuration! A platinum(!) Constellation made for a Middle East Royal Family. Courtesy of Monaco Legend Group.
1) The Overall Numbers
Over three sessions 294 lots went under the hammer of which 284 ultimately sold (96.60%) for a total of 16,267,580€ - that is an average price of 57,235€ per watch.
The lone leader in terms of brands was Rolex: An enormous 110 lots (37%) came from the Genevan watchmaker. Interestingly, the second place went to Cartier (34 lots, 12%, excluding 'retailer only'). This is surprising as the second most prevalent auction brand typically is Patek Philippe - who came in third with 31 lots (11%). Audemars Piguet (25 lots, 9%) and Vacheron Constantin (20 lots, 7%) complete the Top-5.
Figure 1. Overview over sold lots at Monaco Legend Group Auction October 2024 by Brand (left), Decade (middle), and Material (right). The pie diagram (brands) combines brands with 2 or fewer watches under the 'other' category (41 lots, 31 brands). The '1930 bar' combines all watches from before 1940. Data Courtesy of Monaco Legend Group.
Most auctioned lots were made during the 1950s (47 lots, 16%) and generally 55% of the pieces came from the era between the 1950s and 1980s (161 lots).
From all lots yellow gold was by far the most prevalent material (117 lots, 40%), followed by steel (64 lots, 22%), white gold (35 lots, 12%), rose gold (27 lots, 9%), and platinum (25 lots, 9%).
Rolex was the star of the show - and this Oyster Perpetual 'Galaxy' ref. 6098 from 1952 was quite literally... Courtesy of Monaco Legend Group.
2) Realized Prices & Collectability
Now we get to the juicy bit. Auctions are about selling and bidding up to the value each bidder considers accurate (plus/minus the heat of the moment). As I've already highlighted over 95% of the pieces sold at an average price of 58,940€. However, the average (mean) is biased when we got quite a few outliers in one direction - and those are the top lots. The median is the better measure... and is here 20,800€. In other words, 50% of the lots sold for 20,000€ or less and 50% for over 20,000€.
Looking in into each brand we can see that:
Figure 2. Distribution of realized prices* categorized by watch brand from the MLG October 2024 auction. Red and black lines denote the median sales price and the 25%-75% (Interquartile) range, respectively. Depicted are only brands with more than 2 watches offered in the sale. Data Courtesy of Monaco Legend Group.
From the Top-5 brands Rolex, Cartier and Vacheron Constantin majorly sold for right around the median price (20,000€) and their respective top lots (top 25%) for over 40,000€. For Patek Philippe and Audemars Piguet (as well as IWC & Breguet) the picture looks a little different: These brands often sold above the average with the top lots going for over 100,000€. This is generally not too surprising as many of these results can be explained through complications and overall collectability of the brand.
More telling are the distributions over metals and eras as they combine such 'popularity factors':
Figure 3. Distribution of realized prices by decade (left) and material (right). Displayed is the sum over all lots per category (bar) and the proportion of lots per category (asterisks). The 3 most expensive lots (1,000,000+€) are excluded from the analysis to prevent skewing. The '1930 bar' combines all watches from before 1940. Data Courtesy of Monaco Legend Group.
Comparing the realized prices of the lots against the number of watches per category we can see that i) watches of the 1950s appear to be valued highly, the prices are above what we would expect. The figure does also exclude the three most expensive lots (1,000,000+€) that would otherwise skew the results dramatically: two out of three 1,000,000€ watches come from the 1950s (and would increase the bar towards 30%). ii) Other decades that are fetching prices above expectations were the 1970s and the early era before 1940.
The reason the early decades - and particularly the 1950s - are performing so well on the auction block are innovations of the time in technology and design and watches like this - a (so far) unique configuration Patek Philippe 2438 Perpetual Calendar. Photo Courtesy of Monaco Legend Auctions.
Further, iii) on the material side we observe that particularly white gold examples appear to be well collectable and are also 'overperforming'. And what I mean with overperforming is what I'm going to show in the next section.
3) Trends & Over-Performing Lots
With all these watches and variables it's hard to see where we're headed to. And particularly when we only look at prices our perception will be biased towards the most expensive lots and will have us overlook more general trends. I, thus, like to analyze the realized prices in relation to their estimates**. The low estimate is a binding number in terms of the reserve and should (ideally) grant us insights into what might be a realistic price for a certain watch.
One the overperforming lots of the auction - a 1980s Cartier Gondolo with a (maybe) unique Bamboo-style bracelet - that sold for 13x its low estimate. Photo Courtesy of Monaco Legend Group.
If a watch is thus drastically outperforming its estimates it might be well worth taking a closer look at these pieces. This comes of course with some caveats** but overall can grant us important insights into the most recent shifts in the market as a whole*** and trends beyond the established collecting schemes (for example 'Patek Philippe Perpetual Calendars' or 'Rolex Daytonas').
The ratio between price and (low) estimate is the 'performance score' (PS). It is a relative measure how well each watch performed detached from the value of its 'collecting category'. I hereby define a high-performing lot as a piece that sold for over 2x its low estimate (PS>2) and an over-performing lot at over 3x (PS>3).
Figure 4. Performance Scores for all lots from the October 2024 Monaco Legend Group Auction. Light and dark green circles highlight high-performing (PS>2) and over-performing (PS>3) lots, respectively. The shaded areas denote the three sessions, which shows that Sunday morning seems to have been the hottest time for bidding duels. Data Courtesy of Monaco Legend Group.
Overall, we can identify 87 high-performing (30%) and from those 27 over-performing (9%) lots. Of the over-performing lots 8 were in the first session, 13 in the second, and 6 in the last. But what timepieces hide behind these numbers?
Figure 5. Over-Performing lots at Monaco Legend Group Auction 2024 by Brand and Material. * Other brands with one example each are Patek Philippe, Daniel Roth, DeWitt, Girard Perregaux, Hermes, Heuer, & Universal Geneve. ** Other materials are Titanium, Bicolored, Silver, & Multi-Material. Data Courtesy of Monaco Legend Group.
The over-performing lots come predominantly from Rolex (8 lots, 30%), Cartier (6 lots, 22%), Audemars Piguet (4 lots, 15%), and Vacheron Constantin (2 lots, 7%).
The major surprises are that i) Cartier makes up 22% of the top performers even though it only provides 12% of all lots. ii) Similarly, Audemars Piguet pieces were performing on top of the board, displaying a positive trend for the future of these pieces. Importantly, these results were coming from the vintage catalogue straying far from the beaten paths of the Royal Oak. On the other hand, iii) Patek Philippe - that comprises 11% of all lots - had only 1 top performer. Basically, pointing towards a well established market for the brand.
Audemars Piguet has been performing extremely well. However, the top performers came predominantly from far off the beaten 'Royal Oak' paths. Photo Courtesy of Monaco Legend Group.
For the different materials we see that the top performing lots came in white gold (7 lots, 26%), yellow gold (7 lots, 26%), steel (4 lots, 15%), platinum (3 lots, 11%), and rose gold (2 lots, 7%). Hereby, the most surprising material - based on overall prevalence in the sale - is white gold. With overall only every eighth lot being white gold every fourth top performer comes in this metal.
All of this also shows in the Top 10 best performing lots: All of them have a performance score above 4, were made within the last Century and are time-only watches****. 4 out of the Top 10 are Cartier, 4 are white gold, 2 are non-wristwatches, 2 are Jump-Hour watches. Further, 6 of them were made before the 1980s, and 4 before the 1960s, which also means that 4 were neo-vintage (1980s/90s).
Figure 6. Top 10 best performing lots relative to their respective estimates (performance score). The bars are color-coded with respect to the watches' material. Data Courtesy of Monaco Legend Group.
4) Conclusion
Overall, we see that exceptional watches still sell and fetch good prices. I think this is probably the mantra of several professionals and analysts out there - and it means that the time of mass luxury and the hype sports watches is somewhat behind us...
The stars of the show in terms of highest prices are still golden Pre-Zenith Daytonas and vintage calendar Patek Philippe pieces preferably in rose gold. If there's something that won't change soon it is these two categories at the top of the food chain.
A watch and collecting category that will always turn heads - the Patek Philippe Perpetual Calendar watches (here a stunning yellow gold ref. 2497). Photo Courtesy of Monaco Legend Group.
But if we look both broader on the level of the entire auction (Figure 3) as well as closer into each individual lot, factoring out the gross price and focusing on the performance relative to the estimate (Figures 5-6) we can see more overarching trends emerging.
White Gold on the rise. Yellow gold represents old-world charme and rose gold is aesthetically very special but the collectors seem to be more and more after white golden examples. And it makes a lot of sense. White golden examples of almost all collectable vintage references are a lot less common than their yellow and rose golden counterparts and often even rarer than platinum. It got the scarcity factor to it and now it appears that also the taste of many collectors is catching up as well. 'Stealth wealth' is a fashion statement but rarity is for real!
White gold is cool, white gold sells, it seems. Photo Courtesy of Monaco Legend Group.
Cartier is still hot. I wouldn't have thought that in late 2024 we'd still be talking about Cartier gaining momentum. It feels so 2022. However, with increasing 'scholarship'/resources about the brand and the low early production output (compare [here], [here], & [here]) as well as pop-cultural phenomena like Mike Nouveau vintage Cartier just got another boost. The cherry on top is that Cartier very much relied on yellow gold and only extremely scarcely sprinkled in some white gold examples. If the white metal effect added to the Cartier results or vice versa is however open for debate.
1970s shaped Cartier is still on the rise. But is a white gold trend fueling Cartier or vice versa? We'll have to sit and wait. Photo Courtesy of Monaco Legend Group.
Time-only appreciation with a twist. When your feed still gets bombarded with modern sports-watches and date-windows you might as well find this very fulfilling! But jokes aside. It appears vintage two- and three-handed watches might be on the rise. Interestingly, these are not only the 'classic' iterations. What we've seen the last weekend in Monaco has also been jump-hour watches, pocket-watches, skeletonized pieces and clocks making a comeback and adding a twist to the 'basic' time-telling functions of the 'stereotypical' three-hander.
A skeletonized Vacheron Constantin pocket watch in rose gold and black enamel from the 1930s. It hardly gets more classic and quirkier at the same time. Photo Courtesy of Monaco Legend Group.
All of this might very well be a 2024 antithesis to the almost omnipresent independent watchmakers of the last couple of years? If we combine these three trends we see that collectors seem to be looking for unique ways to grace their wrists. The answer to this was until very recently modern 'Independent Watchmaking'. Individualism is valued highly in our little bubble ... When new releases and modern watches fail you, why not looking back into vintage back-catalogues? Maybe there are other side streets to go down in classic horology that is attracting more and more collectors.
Is the time really up for modern Independent watchmaking? When several of the top performing lots come from the - in Monaco rarely seen - genre? Do I have to eat my words in the end or does it again follow the credo: Truly exceptional pieces will always sell well!? Courtesy of Monaco Legend Group.
It takes a lot of knowledge to appreciate such extraordinary and almost quirky watches. Your wrist as a nod to the past. Hopefully, this indicates that there is a growing body of enthusiasts and everyday collectors with both a solid understanding of 20th Century watchmaking and design as well as the trust to ultimately buy these pieces (for example [here]). However, the test for all of my predictions will come early November. Monaco's Legends always bring the vintage heat but with the Geneva auctions up next the focus will shift more and more towards modern horology.
Where does modern watchmaking stand in today's market? How will the Indies perform and will we see anything of what happened in Monaco transfer to Hong Kong or New York, too?
Footnotes
* The prices taken for these analyses include the premium on top of the hammer price.
** The low estimate is a somewhat binding number as the reserve (minimum price) can't be higher than it. There of course is a caveat with estimates as some auction houses like to 'tease' certain lots with low estimates to increase the interest - this is something to keep in mind when assessing the result of individual watches.
*** Outperforming the estimate by several manifolds is likely only happening in sub-markets that are underdetermined. It is relatively unlikely that the market for Patek perpetual calendars or Rolex Daytonas is shifting 3x or more as these are very well established.
**** Time-only in the sense that no calendar or chronograph function was included. Yet, other higher complications like jump-hour or tourbillons were included. And I see how far of a stretch this is for the Daniel Roth...
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