No new stainless subs or GMT in any shops in Edinburgh or Glasgow in the last few months but lots of pre-owned older examples at crazy prices. There was one black bezel new style GMT prices at 8250 pre-owned!
They keep the availability of new ones very slim so the dealers can flog you an older piece at massive mark ups.
I was referring to a previous GMT thread but I’ve seen Haywood already broached the subject so I’ll follow the other thread and leave this one alone.
'Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain' - Schiller.
I seem to be increasingly concerned that in 18 months I will struggle to source an explorer1 for my wife’s 40th as she has decided on one. Used to be easy to get hold of and readily available.
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what's your opinion on it then? How else can they justify selling 10 year old watches for more than the brand new equivalent? The average person walking down the local high street has no idea which model is which. It's like Ford having ten year old Focus on the forecourt and charging more than a brand new model.
I’m pretty sure that Rolex aren’t restricting the market in order for other businesses to make money. Rolex are only interested in new Rolex and their brand image.
Rolex don’t sell ten year old watches just as Ford only sell new Fords; if there were a ten year old Focus on a forecourt then it would be at the price that the dealer on whose forecourt it was situated chose to market it at.
This has if course, all been done to death; if you’d been around these last two years you’d already know that!
Last edited by Dave+63; 20th May 2018 at 21:35.
Good Morning
sorry for the delay in coming back in response to my earlier posts - been fishing
anyway, my apologies as i seem to have offended some people when i talked about 'building a relationship' with an AD in order to get the highly desirable models
but in all honesty i stand by my original comments particularly after this weekend when a friend went to all the AD's in a northern city to enquire about a green sub and ceramic daytona - not one was prepared to place him on a waiting lists as he had no previous purchase history with them!
at least they were honest and explained in detail about availability versus demand - they could have lied and told him his name would be placed on a non existent list?
none said spend 'x' amount and you will get on the list
but availability of so many in demand luxury goods is the same as the Rolex scenario - i wanted a Porsche GT3 as a summer 'toy' - my local dealer could not offer me a car despite having bought Porsche but a few years ago
i mentioned i have been fishing - before i retired due to disability i ran my own sporting agency offering Salmon fishing and deer stalking/shooting on some of the best sporting estates in the UK
you cannot walk in and get the best shooting/fishing even if you have a blank cheque, as many Russians and Arabs have found out!
shooting/fishing is better at certain times of the year - you have to start off at the bottom by leasing less popular days/weeks and hope that you can gradually move up the list - and there are no guarantees even then as prime sporting dates are often handed down in a family as an 'inheritance'
a few years ago a client asked how long he would need to wait to get on a prime River Tweed beat in the autumn (at that time circa £5K/person/week excluding accommodation) - i suggested that his great grandchildren might get offered a less desirable week!
its simply supply and demand
On the whole 'name of prospective purchaser being passed to Rolex for screening'', I believe it as of 2 days ago! And I never get involved in 'my AD says', crap.
Regarding capacity, it's clear Rolex S.A have the capacity to produce Stainless Steel Sports watches with in-house movements. They're in AD's across the land and they're branded Tudor. The full range is available in my local retailer. So what does that tell us?
To me it tells me that if I want a new Rolex watch the brand would prefer to sell me a precious metal one. The AD would too, both will make more profit on the sale. If my budget doesn't stretch that far, we'll Sir we have and a more affordable brand here also.
At the moment I am not sure just what the tipping point is for prospective buyers looking for a Sports.
Certainly cannot see anyone who is looking for a Sports suddenly thinking that because of the wait list they will just buy a diamond encrusted dial datejust etc.instead but at some point if this availability scenario continues, does there come a point we’re the buyers just move on.
I wonder if these individuals have given permission for their information to be shared with Rolex?
I still don’t believe it personally, for a start who in Rolex would make the decision and on what basis? Money spent? Number of Rolex bought? What if I’d spent £250k on JLC. Finally, I’d be really surprised if Rolex cared that much, and if they do, how sad.
This makes sense up to a point, in that it would be a possible explanation of the short supply of ss sports models, but....
If they really wanted to push people towards precious metal models (and Tudor for ss), how does that explain the plentiful supply of ss oyster perpetual and Datejusts etc. I’ve even seen the odd explorer and air kings in AD window displays, so there seems sufficient supply of some ss models.
Also, why go to the bother of developing a brand new ss sports model ie blro gmt, with apparent new case and specific jubilee bracelet. That must have cost plenty in r&d costs. Really doesn’t then make sense to say “look at this brand new watch, it’s what everyone’s been waiting for, but you can’t have one for years, why not buy a Tudor instead at less than half the price”!!??
Judging by the state of apparently every Rolex AD window display, It would make far more sense to reduce production of date just/ OP and increase production of ss gmt/ sub/ Daytona models.
At the end of the day, I can see Rolex might want to control supply of watches overall but if they want to sell (say) 1m watches a year, why not increase the proportion of sports ss models, where there is clearly huge demand, and decrease the proportion of those in plentiful supply??