Tudor Heritage Chrono: Does It Pay to Be Different?
Image Source: Swisswatches Magazine
In our last article on the Tudor Heritage Chrono, we explored the rich history of this unique watch. Although exotic and unusual in today’s world of black and white chronographs, the Tudor Heritage Chrono harkens back to a time when watches were simply tools or expressions of their owner.
However, in a world of smartphones and smartwatches, mechanical watches have become a luxury, a non-necessity, and with any luxury purchase you always ask yourself, “was that worth it?” Today we’re here to examine the potential financial value in the Tudor Heritage Chrono.
It wouldn’t be easy to see the relative investment potential of a watch without having something to compare it against. I’ve chosen to compare the Tudor Heritage Chrono to another chronograph in Tudor’s range, the Black Bay Chrono. Although just recently updated for 2021, at Watches & Wonders, we’ll be taking a look at the previous generation BB Chrono, released in 2017.
As we can see in the first graph, with the yellow line representing the Heritage Chrono and blue line representing the BB Chrono, the price of the Heritage Chrono has stayed relatively flat with slight up and down fluctuations, however no major price movements. The Tudor Chrono, on the other hand, has trended mostly flat however with major fluctuations. It’s unclear why these fluctuations are occurring, this may be due to rumors of discontinuation, updates, or possibly just changes in the market dynamic for these types of watches.
An interesting point to note is the recent upwards trend in prices for both watches beginning at the end of 2020 and into 2021. This may be due to an increase in demand due to the extreme shortage of Rolex Daytona, one of the most sought after watches and chronographs on the market today. Additionally, the recent discontinuation of the 2017 Black Bay Chrono may also move prices, it will be interesting to monitor in order to see how prices react as the effects of the new release haven’t had time to reflect in the secondary market.
Now you may be thinking that it’s pretty clear that the Black Bay Chrono is the better watch buy here, but we should also consider the percent return to really understand the value of the watch in terms of investment potential.
In this graph we actually see that the Heritage Chrono is a better investment in terms of percent returns over the Tudor Chrono. The Heritage Chrono has almost consistently outperformed the BB Chrono except for a brief period at the end of 2020 where the price of the Heritage Chrono dropped. Interesting to note is that both pieces track very closely in terms of returns, never really moving more than 10% away from each other. This is most likely due to the similarity of both pieces.
Just as an interesting experiment I plotted the returns of the two Tudor chronographs against their bigger brother the DaytonaC (black dial for a more “fair” comparison) and the difference is astounding. The Daytona is almost consistently 120% higher than the two Tudor chronographs. This isn’t unexpected, given the highly sought after nature of the Daytona and the relative availability of the two Tudor chronos, but it illustrates just how dominant the Daytona is in the watch world and just how highly sought after a watch it is.
Although both watches trade below MSRP, it’s clear to see the uptrend forming in prices, most likely due to the new releases of the watches. Additionally, with this information it’s likely that you will be able to get both Tudor watches at a discount through an AD allowing you to make money on the watches in the near future! I will continue to monitor the situation as the market begins to absorb the news of the release of an updated BB Chrono and will keep you updated on any developments!
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