The watch collector community is aghast (or should be) at the naked greed on display at Swatch stores yesterday. Saturday was the day a much-hyped plastic pocket watch, jointly designed by Swatch and high-end watchmaker Audemars Piguet, went on sale at Swatch outlets around the world. This isn’t the first venture between Swatch and fancy Swiss brands — over the past three years Swatch has gone in with Omega and Blancpain on cheap versions of expensive watches that immediately get flipped by buyers at greatly inflated prices — so you’d think Swatch would have been prepared for a rush on this new collaboration with AP. But apparently they weren’t. Stores all around the world were mobbed by crowds that had begun forming the night before: there were fights and near riots, police were called, stores were forced to close.
All this over a plastic pocket watch selling for $400, and not even a limited edition — the “Royal Pop” AP/Swatch pocket watch will be mass produced and be on sale for months to come, with more than enough to go around. So what’s behind the hysteria to have one on Day One? Or ten, or twenty?
 |
 |
Greed. The mobs were made up of flippers intending to grab as many as they could the second the stores opened and immediately flip them for quadruple (or even more) what they paid for them. There were a few people in the crowds who merely wanted one for themselves, but almost everyone else was a flipper. At some Swatch stores, as police clubbed and maced mobs rushing the doors, the few flippers who’d managed to get in before the stores closed were already reselling the watches they’d bought — demanding, and getting, literally thousands of dollars. The greed on display was as naked as it gets, and shows no sign of slowing down: some Swatch stores have already announced that they’ll remain closed today.
I’m not kidding. Would you believe these $400 plastic pocket watches are already on eBay, listed at prices ranging from $1,500 to $4,000? That’s what I’m seeing as I’m writing this post on Sunday, May 17th, at 6:55 a.m. Here’s a link, though by the time you click on it prices may have changed — for better or worse I won’t predict.
My very limited experience with flippers dates back to October 2021, when I bought a limited-edition Seiko. The watch, designed based on customer and fan inputs, was announced in 2020. It incorporated a gold dial reminiscent of the iconic Seiko Speedtimer from the 1970s, and a blue & red bezel from another icon of the 1990s, the SKX009 diver. Here’a a photo.
When I saw the first press releases, I decided I wanted one. This watch turned out to be the start of my collecting journey — until then I was just a guy who had a couple of nice watches and liked them — now I’m an obsessive nerd with over 30 in my collection.
I knew there’d be a scramble to get one, since production would be limited to 2,021 pieces. You couldn’t get on a list until the summer of 2021, when Seiko began taking reservations. They put up a website with an order form, but every time I filled it out and clicked “submit” the site would freeze, so instead I called a local Seiko dealer and asked if they could get me one. They cautioned me that insiders had probably already bought out the entire run but said they’d try, and luckily they got one for me, one of the last hundred made (mine is #1,934). They didn’t mark it up, either: full retail was just under $240, which I happily paid. That same day I picked my watch up, other buyers were already reselling theirs on eBay, asking for (and probably getting) $800 to $1,000. That didn’t bother me, or affect me in the slightest. I bought the watch for myself, with no intention to resell (I’m wearing it right now, in fact), and what other buyers did with theirs was no business of mine. It was a limited edition, after all, so why wouldn’t people try to take advantage of that and make a little extra money on the side?
But what’s happening with this mass-produced AP/Swatch plastic pocket watch is reminiscent of Beanie Babies and the Dutch Tulip Mania of the 1600s, greed out of control and fanned by mob hysteria. It gives watch collectors a bad name. It gives me the ick.
When I started building my collection, I joined and then quickly left several online watch communities. With the exception of WatchCrunch, where I’ve found a welcoming and congenial home, the various forums and groups are dominated by greedoids and flippers, constantly trying to resell watches they’ve just bought, making lowball bids on watches others are trying to flip, worrying that the sub-$20 Timex they snagged on Facebook Marketplace is a fake, asking other members what they think they’ll be able to get for grampaw’s Rolex the instant he gives up the ghost and they can saw it off his cold dead wrist.
Like I said, it gives me the ick. It’s the ugly face of watch collecting. There are a few snobs on WatchCrunch, but very few flippers — its members are mostly there for the love of watches, which they buy to wear. People like me.
You can have your plastic pocket watch. If Swatch ever gets in bed with Rolex or Breitling, though, you can look for me in the mob on release day.