In-Depth The '90s Are In And Everyone Wants Complications From The Holy Trinity: Five Predictions For The Watch Market In 2023

I know, I promised "trends." But perhaps the best thing that could happen in 2023 is the diminishing of trends that have defined the last few years of quote-unquote collecting.

"If anything, I'm happy to see that trends are subsiding," says Adam Victor of Moncao Legends (and our favorite Fifty Fathoms collector). After a few pandemic-fueled years of everyone chasing the same modern watches, hyping them up more than this week's Tiffany x Nike collab, people are ready for something different. There's no more FOMO – Patek 5711 prices are going down, not up, so no need to get one while the getting's good.

"The real health of the market – secondary, primary – is not about tricks," Victor added. "It's not about limited, it's not about marketing or exclusivity or changing dial colors. It's figuring out what is inherently interesting about these things." And the great thing about that? What's inherently interesting to you is different from what's inherently interesting to me, which is different from what's inherently interesting to collector/comedian Kevin Hart.

At the Miami Beach Antique Show this year, I saw more variety on display than last year – sure, there were still sport watches, but vintage and neo-vintage from a whole host of brands were getting people excited (and the buzz for modern watches was more or less gone). It was "hey, did you see the Parmigiani over there?", followed with "yea, but did you see the Marine Nationale Tudor Sub over here?" Sure, I probably saw the most deals being made for top-quality vintage Rolex, but more buzz was generated by other brands. While vintage Patek and Rolex continue to be strong and stable, people seem excited about discovering (or re-discovering) watches beyond those blue chips and digging deeper into the back catalogs across more brands and more decades.

For most watches, prices aren't going to rise this year like they did the last few years. With that, people won't feel the need to "chase trends" – there's time to slow down, take a breath, and consider what watches are actually interesting to you, not what's interesting to me or Kevin Hart or that guy at the meetup you kind of want to make jealous but don't want to admit it.

I'm not breaking any news saying that watches from the '80s and '90s are popular. But in 2023, enthusiasts will continue to be more discerning about the watches from this era. Sure, the interest in neo-vintage might've started with Cartier, Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet, and a few indies, but it's going to continue to go deeper this year.

"While the holy trinity ultra-thin perpetual calendars are most commonly associated with the neo-vintage era I can't help but look a little further," says dealer Ben Dunn of Watch Brothers London, who specializes in trading watches from this era. "Currently, you can pick up a tourbillion or a minute repeating perpetual calendar from big hitters like Breguet and Blancpain for a significant discount to their original retail price – we're talking 50 to 75 percent."

This year, enthusiasts will get more discerning about what neo-vintage watches are exciting and offer true value. Sure, neo-vintage Rolex and Omega can offer value propositions (and don't get me started on '90s IWC), especially as alternatives to new watches that often have waitlists, but these are still mass-produced watches.

The true excitement of the '90s was around the rebirth of traditional watchmaking – both in the birth of independents and in larger houses re-focusing on traditional watchmaking and complications. It was Ikepod and ultra-thin perpetual calendars and Daniel Roth, not just Seamaster 300s and Subs (though those are great too).

"The value is undeniable and with neo-vintage being such an open book, there is something in there for everyone, regardless of differing tastes," Dunn said. He did issue a word of caution, adding that, "although there is tremendous value, be sure to fully understand the models and carry out your own research. It is now a somewhat trendy space and with this often comes speculation and manipulation on pricing."

Expect to hear more about those neo-vintage heavy hitters from Breguet, Blancpain, and others this year.

This is, in a way, derivative of the continued neo-vintage trend, but also different. Back in our December auction preview, we called out the Jaeger-LeCoultre Gyrotourbillon 2 from 2008 as, basically, one crazy watch. Well, it ended up selling for $113,000, at the lower end of its $100,000 to $200,000 estimate. Still, some people look at watch the Gyrotourbillon and see, well, one crazy watch.

"Collecting styles go in and out of fashion," Sotheby's watch specialist Jonathan Burford told me in early January. "But when you can pick up something like a [Jaeger-LeCoultre] Gyrotourbillon, which is genuinely rare and valuable and complex, people are inevitably going to gravitate towards that, and some of these have sat unloved for some time." He brought up the Gyrotourbillon without me asking, so it seems we weren't the only ones genuinely enthralled by this watch.

But, as Burford says, styles are cyclical. As Ben reminded us in that auction preview, "complications were everything in 2008. This is what watchmaking was. This is what the Swiss were selling back then, and what buyers of high-end watches wanted." Now, a generation of enthusiasts (*raises hand*) who weren't around when these watches were first released are discovering them for the first time, and we're fascinated by some of them.

While the Gyrotourbillon's result was underwhelming, there was one other complicated watch in that December Sotheby's auction that blew past its estimate which I had to ask Burford about – this Audemars Piguet Jules Audemars Grande Sonnerie in platinum:

On an estimate of $50,000 to $80,000, the watch sold for $239,400 – Burford said six or seven bidders chased the watch for a while, before two dedicated collectors battled it out over the last few increments. While the Gyrotourbillon still baffles me, this Grande Sonnerie is the type of complicated watchmaking I can get behind: 39mm, platinum, grande and petite sonnerie.

Yes, a lot of this complicated watchmaking comes from the neo-vintage era, but it can take other forms too. Pocket watches. Vintage, beyond chronographs. Even modern complicated watches like the Gyrotourbillon that have fallen out of fashion.

This year, people will continue to realize there's serious, complicated watchmaking to be had for the same price as a 5711 on the secondary market – hell, you can still get complicated Pateks for that price (give me a 3940 or 3970J, or even 5170, any day of the week) before we even get to the true "values" in complicated watches. There's still a lot of room for appreciation of complicated watches to grow across vintage, neo-vintage, and modern watches.

"An exciting market outside of neo-vintage is the revival of the jewelry-based models from brands like Piaget, Vacheron, Rolex, and others from the '70s and '80s," Dunn of Watch Brothers London said. We're talking about the Rolex King Midas, Piaget Polo, and stone dials and jewelry-adjacent watches from all sorts of other brands.

When our vintage expert Rich Fordon wrote his market update after the Miami Beach Antique Show, I relayed a favorite story of mine from the show: As I was mid-conversation with a dealer, a discrete Italian gentleman walked up to show off his haul from scouring the halls of the convention center, pulling a trio of vintage Piaget watches out of his pocket, all with different stone dials and three of the most gorgeous bracelets I've ever seen.

And it's not just this discrete Italian gentleman hoovering up vintage Piaget: This week, we saw actor Michael B. Jordan wearing a vintage Piaget Polo courtside at a Knicks game. When everyone from suave Italians to Michael B. Jordan is paying attention to something, it's time to give it a second look.

"These fabulous and often exotic designs pack a serious punch in terms of value and rarity and have been creeping back into the mainstream," Dunn said.

I'm not arguing that everyone's going to show up in an all-gold Chopard Dual Time at your next watch meetup – these watches are weird, more like pieces of jewelry than the sport watches we've been obsessed with the last few years (though if we're being honest, those are largely ornamental too). They're an acquired taste. But from Rolex to Piaget to Chopard, there are hundreds of different models to be discovered – this year, more people are going to take the time to find one they love.

Reality check time: The watch market is slower than it was a year ago. In some cases, much slower. Scroll through recent auctions and you'll find more unsold lots and watches that sold below estimates, sometimes because auction houses have loaded up on modern watches that used to be hot. This is especially the case for watches that really aren't that special, and maybe even sometimes watches that are objectively special, but maybe we're just a little tired of.

Last week, a Journe Tourbillon Souverain Ruthenium went unsold in Artcurial's auction, selling post-sale for €367,360 (about $401,000). That's down significantly from December 2021, when we saw the same watch sell for $567,000. The rise of Journe was one of the biggest stories of the pandemic, and this Ruthenium Tourbillon is a legitimately rare watch from Journe's early years, limited to 99 pieces. I'm not saying we're all about to trade in our Journe tourbs for a Rolex King Midas, but as the market slows down, interests will turn elsewhere, away from the watches that flooded our Instagram feeds during the pandemic. And it'll take watches that are even more special to move the market.

"Another year deeper into a bear watch market that has seen prices pull back slightly will lead to fewer excellent watches coming to auction," Hodinkee vintage expert Rich Fordon said. "Sellers will assume it's better to hold for the next bull run. The result? Those truly special, top-of-market condition watches that hit the block will be rewarded greatly as supply does not meet what is still a solid level of demand." Sure, that standard Ruthenium Tourbillon didn't do well, but former Ferrari boss Jean Todt's unique example still sold for more than a million dollars last November, after all. As the market feels more tenuous, it'll take truly special watches – vintage, neo-vintage, or modern – for collectors to feel confident.

But, a special watch is still a special watch: collectors are still going crazy for rare Cartier Pebbles, pristine Paul Newmans, and Pateks with provenance, same as ever. For the rest of us though, 2023 might be a year of patience as the market catches its breath.

Hero images: Courtesy of Watch Brothers London, Hodinkee Shop, and Getty Images, respectively.