Golden Rationale - How's the Market for the Patek Philippe Ellipse Today (Part 2)

- Over the last two years the monthly sold Ellipses doubled -

 

 

In Part 1 we established that the Golden Ellipse was just revitalized in 2018 through Patek Philippe's continued efforts to bring the collection into the 21st Century. However, what we have left open so far is how do these pieces perform on today's market:

 What sells, what sits? How much do you have to spend on a modern or vintage Ellipse? And are there recent trends emerging?

 

Even in the auction market the Ellipse is gaining momentum. In October and November 2023 we saw two record setting Ellipse watches hit the auction block: At Christie's Geneva a Tiffany-blue ref. 3589 with Muammar Gaddafi's signature (left, 138,600CHF) and at Monaco Legend Group an Haute Joaillerie ref. 3610 with petrol blue sunburst dial (right, 143,000Eur). But today won't be about auctions but the open market.

 

1) The Pricing Overview

Taking an even deeper dive into the 'Dealer's Archives' (EveryWatch) we can now quantify not only the prices* of individual Ellipse references - modern & vintage - but also see how long it takes to sell, what factors might influence this and how the open market has evolved over the last two years (since October 2022).

Overall, we see a listing volume of 46.7 Million USD from around 2,800 watches over the last two years. That is a mean price of 16,666$, and a median price of 12,000$.

 

Figure 1. Patek Philippe Ellipse listing prices for all references between October 2022 and November 2024. Data Courtesy of EveryWatch.

 

To break this distribution down a little further: on the more affordable end 10% of the Ellipses are listed for under 7,000$, 25% for under 8,750$. On the upper end of the spectrum the 25% highest priced pieces come at over 18,500$, 10% over 30,750$ and a total of 65 Ellipses (2.3%) will cost you north of 60,000$ up to 200,000$. This is a lot of numbers to digest but let's put it this way: Of the Patek Philippe Ellipse pieces the majority is listed below 12,000$ but the most extravagant pieces can cost up to 200,000$.

 

The modern Patek Philippe Ellipse reference 5738/51G with hand-engraved and black enamel dial is by far the execution with the highest listing prices... topped only by the even scarcer 'Rare Handcrafts' pieces with artisanal enamelling.

 

Out of the 50 highest listed watches all 50 were modern ref. 5738. It takes us to number 61 on the list to find the first 'vintage' watch - a white golden ref. 4151 bracelet watch with cobalt blue dial. Out of the Top100 most expensive pieces only 5 were made before 2000! There is a critical price gap between vintage and modern Ellipse pieces.

 

Figure 2. Listing Prices of Patek Philippe Ellipse watches grouped by production decade. Boxes display the 25%-75% range, thick yellow lines the decade specific median, the black lines denote the full price range and the dashed line the median over all watches. The display was trimmed at 120,000$ (max. listing price 2020s = 197,546$). Data Courtesy of EveryWatch.

 

This nicely shows that neo-vintage (starting in the 2000s) Ellipse references start to be priced well above the vintage classics in today's market. We see that for more and more modern pieces the median prices rise to over 18,000$, 25,000$ and 42,000$ for the 2000s, 2010s and 2020s, respectively. One might argue it's no wonder with today's retail prices ranging between 37,430Eur for a rose golden example going all the way up to 78,330Eur for the 5738/51G (see above, prices Dec. 2024, Patek Philippe).

 

The horizontally aligned Patek Philippe ref. 4151 with Jean-Pierre Ecoffey bracelet is among the highest priced vintage Ellipses (made between 1972-79) in our current market. Photo Courtesy of The Keystone.

 

2) Individual References

In our pool of data we have access to 13 references with over 50 examples listed over the last two years. We take these references to get a better feeling what different references - comprising 50+ years of Patek Philippe design - could cost in today's market and what features could be the defining factor.

 

Figure 3. Listing Prices of Patek Philippe Ellipse watches for the most common references. Boxes display the 25%-75% range, thick yellow lines the median, the black lines denote 10%-90% range and the black dashed line the median over all watches. Below is a schematic of the left-right diameter from small to large (<27mm, 27mm, 31mm, 34mm). Data Courtesy of EveryWatch.

 

All the more popular vintage pieces cluster around the average price of 12,000$... some above, some below that value. For each individual watch the 'gold value' plays an important role, i.e. does it come on a strap or gold bracelet. However, what seems to be determining whether a reference is situated above or below that median line is not the movement, is not the age... It seems to be largely driven by its size:

 

Figure 4. Listing Prices of Patek Philippe Ellipse watches grouped by size (based on the 30 most common references). The plot is color-coded as above. Data Courtesy of EveryWatch.

 

Basically, if you go from the sub-27mm class to 27mm 'Mid-Size' Ellipses you have a price increase of about 15%. And going from 'Mid-Size' to a 'Jumbo' 31mm you'd even have to spend 81% more (39% when we exclude the modern-esque ref. 3738). And all of these jumps occur for vintage watches with compatible movements, bracelets, designs and rarity. Isn't it mindblowing that a 27% wrist-presence** increase spikes prices by 40-80%?

3) How Quickly Do Ellipses Sell?

Well, to define a 'hot watch' price is only one specific feature. Actually, I'd argue the price is less an indication of future success but rather the end-result of previous evolutions. But, when we take a closer look at how swiftly watches sell we might get closer to quantifying trends. Because when a watch sells in a flash it might probably have been sold for a higher price as well. If that is the case for an entire reference we might wanna take a closer look at these pieces. And if you're on the hunt for one of them... you'd better be quick.

 

Figure 5. Time duration watches are listed online before taken offline for all tracked Patek Philippe Ellipse references (94 references, 2804 watches). Data Courtesy of EveryWatch.

 

And I must say most Ellipse pieces sell rather quickly. 18% are sold within the first 48h of being listed. It takes about 6 days until a quarter of them are sold and half of all Patek Philippe Ellipse over the last two years have been sold within the first 6 weeks (41 days). But we also see some pieces sitting for quite some time: 10% of the watches were listed for over 37 weeks (263 days) and a little over 5% waited more than a year for a new owner.

Now, how does all of this relate to our most common references? How many of them sell faster than the average, and how many sit on the shelves?

 

Figure 6. Time duration watches are listed online before taken offline grouped by the most popular Patek Philippe Ellipse references (10 references, 1487 watches). Data Courtesy of EveryWatch.

 

Surprisingly, the most common Ellipse - the long-lasting (1977-2009) 'Jumbo' ref. 3738 - is also among the fastest selling pieces out there (median = 29 days). It is only beaten by the ref. 3848 - the 'Mid-Size' T-lug vintage Ellipse (1977-1998) - that on average leaves the stores after merely three weeks (21 days).

Whereas on the longer end we find the modern ref. 5738 (median = 55 days), the horizontal ref. 3545 (63 days) and the small Lady's Ellipse ref. 4830 (75 days).

 

If you see one ref. 3848 pop up anywhere you'd better be quick, those sell like hot cakes. Photo from Goldammer Archives.

 

However, before we come to conclusions we need to take one last interaction into consideration: The more expensive a reference on average, the longer it will sit. That is simply because the clientele buying a 6,000$ watch is much broader than one looking for a 60,000$ piece. The matter of the beast is that fewer enthusiasts can aim for the highest prices.

In other words, we have to divide the the listing time with the price of each piece. This variable can indicate the monetary turnover of a reference as the time it takes to come sell compatible amounts on each reference. Specifically, I compute how long a seller would need to stock an Ellipse to sell 1,000$ worth of watch***.

 

Figure 7. Listing time normalized for listing price ('time to sell 1,000$ worth of watch') for the most popular Patek Philippe Ellipse references (10 references, 1487 watches). Dashed line indicates the overall median (2.84 days). Data Courtesy of EveryWatch.

 

On average it takes 2.84 days to sell 1,000$ worth of an Ellipse. Think about it this way: the average Ellipse costs you 12,000$ thus you have (12 x 2.84) 34 days to consider before it'll be gone (on average). Or from the dealer's perspective: You for example did a great job if you can sell a 9,000$ Ellipse in under 25 days (9 x 2.84).

The best 10% watches on this metric are overwhelmingly often ref. 3738 (72 out of 248) followed by ref. 5738 (41 of 248) and the ref. 3848 (23 of 248). Those three are the quickest to turn around when we take the final listing price out of the equation. 

Thus, based on listing time the evergreen ref. 3738 scores best and seems to be the hottest of the pack at the moment. Followed put by the 2nd generation Ellipse and in particular the very classic ref. 3848 and also the modern ref. 5738. These three are indeed the pieces that seem to be the most sought after right now! On the other we do see that non-classical references like the horizontal ref. 3545 or the women's collection (refs. 4xxx) take some more time.

 

The unconventional ref. 3545 is stunning in appearance but potentially a little too uncommon for the popular taste to sell out quickly. Photo Courtesy of Bachmann & Scher.

 

4) Conclusion

This has been quite dense and I'm excited for every single person who made it through! Thank You! I hope you can also agree with me that the Ellipse is special and deserves a second look from collectors and enthusiasts. And the market is growing too. I haven't shown you this yet but the number of newly listed Ellipse pieces has steadily grown over the last two years:

 

Figure 8. Patek Philippe Ellipse watches sold per month between Oct. 2022 and Oct. 2024****. Data Courtesy of EveryWatch.

 

Right now there are over 130 tracked Ellipse watches selling on the open market every month - a number that is increasing by about 3 pieces per month... This doesn't sound like much but over the two-year timeframe we're analyzing here that means that the number of pieces selling monthly have doubled!

All in all, this proves to show that the genre of design-driven watches is extremely popular. And my vintage-fuelled heart skips a beat when I see that actually 1960s and 70s designs and sizes seem to be performing not only on-par but even better than the modern Ellipse. It is the second generation of the Ellipse (37xx & 38xx) that have not only been the historically longest running examples but are performing beyond expectations - both in terms of overall numbers and turnaround rate.

 

The 'Jumbo', the 'Evergreen', the 'Bestseller', the Patek Philippe ref. 3738 (/117J). Photo from Goldammer Archives.

 

However, with this analyses do also come certain caveats that we need to keep in mind. First, we're speaking about listing prices, so the final sales prices will likely vary and be below those reported here. By how much we don't know for sure.

Second, and more importantly, these analyses are detached from each watch's condition. I'd like to spin this very positively though: Isn't it fascinating what conclusions we can already draw while we're naive to this very very central aspect of the (vintage-)watch market? Look at it this way... when you inspect a piece you're considering, knowing what you know through this analysis and can even incorporate the condition of that particular Ellipse... now that's a game changer.

The amount of data we have available today is so strikingly powerful! Everyone able to gather this information and make sense of it is at an advantage. You don't need a PhD in data science but taking this seriously will help everyone - the collectors and dealers - making better and hopefully more transparent decisions in the future.

 

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Acknowledgements

This piece of work only exists because of the data collected and provided by EveryWatch. I would like to particularly thank Giovanni Prigigallo (Co-Founder of EveryWatch, @prigi35) and his Team for the trust and the stimulating and insightful exchanges along the way!

I would like to further thank Marc Montague (@initialsmm) for spreading his excitement for the collection and adding key observations.

 

Footnotes

* One important caveat to keep in mind is that the prices are 'listing prices' and do not necessarily display the final 'sales prices'.

** aka a watch's surface area between 27mm to 31mm Ellipse pieces.

*** Preferably, you'd take the margin and not the sales price but unfortunately that's a metric we don't have here.

**** October 2024 has also been the dealer strike on Chrono24 and the time numerous dealers pulled their listings off the site. We thus find a record-breaking 458 Ellipses 'ending' in October due to this event. That month is thus