Discontinued Pepsi fuels buoyant secondary market
In a fillip for the secondary market, leading analyst WatchCharts saw its Overall Market Index gaining 2.1% in April.
The increasingly widespread growth of the secondary market continues, with only four of the top 27 major brands depreciating in April.
Unsurprisingly, one of the key takeaways was the strength of the Rolex GMT-Master, leading to appreciation of 1.8% for the wider line. This was fuelled by the discontinuation of its famous ‘Pepsi’ variant at Watches and Wonders, after months of unconfirmed rumours.
Interestingly, the data suggests that prices of the three iterations of the Pepsi have actually cooled a little since Watches and Wonders, suggesting that the market had overcorrected before the official discontinuation. This is backed up by the fact that new listings for the Pepsi reached an all time high in the seven days prior to the discontinuation, suggesting that owners had been sitting on inventory in an attempt to strike at the right moment, only to ironically bolster supply sufficiently to lead to a small dip in prices.
Of the three Pepsi models, by far the most popular is the stainless steel 126710BLRO, which gained a full 12% in the first quarter of the year.
Rolex’s sister brand Tudor showed the greatest gains (+6.4%) but WatchCharts puts this largely down to a technicality, based on more expensive variants of its Black Bay Chrono Ref. 79360N driving the price up.
