Demand for Royal Pop cools on the secondary market

Fresh data supplied by pre-owned watch platform Chrono24 indicates that the Royal Pop’s resale value has already cooled off.

From an average resale price of around €1,440 in the days following the much-hyped launch last month, it settled to below €1,000 for most variants two weeks later. The exception to this is the blue Làn Ba variant, which still sells for around €1,600.

Another metric that Chrono24 measures is daily buyer requests, which have fallen from 2.9 times the 2022 MoonSwatch peak at launch to nearer 1.4 times that peak a fortnight later.

And new listings are down 80% from the peak, as the first surge of flippers work their way through the system.

“The most expensive time to buy one was the first weekend, when demand was at its peak,” said Balazs Ferenczi, head of brand engagement at Chrono24. “That premium is mostly gone now. What is left is a watch that still sells above retail, at a price that makes sense for someone who actually wants to wear it.”

More generally, Chrono24’s data surrounding the Royal Pop ties in with a wider trend that the re-seller has noticed, which is the proliferation of colourful watches.

“In 2018, around one in six watches sold on Chrono24 had a colourful dial. Today it is closer to one in four, a share that has grown by about 16% over the past five years,” the company said. Blue is the most popular colourful dial by a clear margin, while green and pink have grown several times over since 2018.

“The taste shows up most strongly at both ends of the market. At the entry level, where the Royal Pop sits, colour is everywhere, on popular lines like the Seiko Presage, the Oris Aquis, and the Doxa Sub. At the high end it is just as established, the defining feature of icons like the Patek Philippe Nautilus and the Vacheron Constantin Overseas.”