Breguet the major winner on secondary market in August

Secondary market research specialist WatchCharts’ Mark Xu runs through his key observations from July.

In August, the WatchCharts Overall Market Index gained by +0.4%. The three biggest brands on the secondary market by transaction value — Rolex (+0.5%), Patek Philippe (+0.3%), and Audemars Piguet (+0.2%) — all gained slightly.

August follows July as another month without drastic price movements. Only one major brand — Breguet (+1.2%) — swung by more than one percent. 18 out of the 28 major brands that we track were in the positive territory.

In focus: TAG Heuer’s Formula 1 finds another gear

While we have covered Patek Philippe‘s recent rally at length in our previous monthly reports, a quiet top performer over the past few months trades for less than the service cost of a Patek. TAG Heuer‘s Formula 1 collection has gained +4.4% in August and +14.8% since the start of 2026. Most of the thirty references in the Formula 1 Market Index are in-production or recently discontinued quartz models trading under $1,200.

What makes the move notable is how long it took to arrive. The Formula 1 has never left the catalog since TAG Heuer reintroduced the line in 2004, and the most traded models belong to the current-generation lineup, in production since 2015. The Solargraph relaunch of the original 1986 design in March 2025 brought fresh attention to the collection, following the sold-out Kith collaboration the year before. But prices did not follow: the collection fell in each of the four years from 2022 to 2025, and last year was the worst of them at -11.7%.

Then 2026 happened. The index is up +14.8% since the start of the year, six of its eight months have been positive, and the gains have grown larger as the year has gone on rather than tailing off. That has taken the collection to a twelve-month high and to within about 9% of its 2021 peak, recovering more than half of the previous four years’ losses in eight months.

The rally is easiest to understand as a question of value. Watches priced between $500 and $1,000 have been the strongest segment of the whole secondary market over the past year, up +17.0% as a group. One of the largest Swiss collections living mostly inside that band is the Formula 1, a well-known racing watch from a mainstream Swiss brand at a price few competitors can match. The attention TAG Heuer earned in 2025, from the Solargraph relaunch to its return as Formula 1’s official timekeeper, gave that value a name buyers already recognized.

Nor is the Formula 1 moving alone. The TAG Heuer Market Index is up +11.1% over the past year, ahead of the WatchCharts Overall Market Index‘s +9.7%, with six of eight collections positive. The Formula 1 leads by a wide margin — the next-best collection, the Monaco, is up +8.2% — but the breadth is the point. Today, TAG Heuer is trading near a twelve-month high with its most affordable collection out in front. It’s a brand worth paying attention to over the next few months.