The Rolex Market Is Normal Again

Coronet Magazine recently published a piece looking at the WatchCharts Rolex Market Index and came to a straightforward conclusion: if you extend the pre-Covid trend line forward, today's Rolex secondary market sits roughly where it "should" be. The boom years from late 2020 through 2022 were the anomaly, not the baseline.

What that framing doesn't fully capture is how different the market feels to navigate right now—not necessarily because prices are low, but because they're starting to make sense again.

When Rolex Pricing Stopped Reflecting Value

Rolex Market Index. Figure Source: WatchCharts

The pandemic spike stopped making sense long before prices peaked. The tell, for me, was the disconnect between value and price when you looked at individual watches.

Submariners traded thousands above retail with no change to the watch itself. Steel sports models rose week after week simply because they had risen the week before. You could break down the materials, the movement, the bracelet, the production scale—nothing intrinsic to the object justified the secondary market price tag. Speculation and scarcity was feeding itself.

A Submariner Case Study

Rolex Submariner 126610

Modern Submariners are objectively better watches than their five-digit predecessors. Movements are more advanced, bracelets are heavier and better constructed, tolerances are tighter. There are real reasons a 126610 costs more than a 16610 ever did at retail.

But Rolex watches are designed to live a lifetime. When a ten- or twenty-year-old Submariner remains fully serviceable, robust, and desirable, yet trades significantly lower than its modern equivalent, that gap tells you something about value.

Rolex Submariner 16610

At the 2022 peak, a modern 126610LN traded around $18,000 on the secondary market while a five-digit 16610 sat around $12,000. That's a $6,000 spread for what amounts to a ceramic bezel, an updated movement, and slightly refined case proportions. Today, the 126610LN trades between $13,000 and $15,500 while the 16610 sits below $9,000—a $4,000 to $6,500 spread that feels more proportional to the actual improvements.

During the peak years, modern Subs weren't just more expensive than five-digit Subs—they were inflated relative to what they offered. The premium wasn't about material improvements, but market momentum. Today, that price delta feels more grounded. The modern watch still commands more money, but the spread makes sense when you look at retail pricing, availability, and demand.

What "Normal" Rolex Pricing Looks Like in 2026

Rolex Explorer II 226570

Normal doesn't mean cheap, of course. And it doesn't mean everything trades at retail. There are still clear outliers. Daytonas, GMT-Master II Pepsis, and newer releases like the left-hand GMT continue to command significant secondary premiums. That's just supply and demand. These watches are genuinely hard to get, and the market reflects that.

What's changed is the rest of the catalog. Watches that should be easier to obtain are behaving that way on the secondary market. Take the Explorer II 226570, which peaked at around $15,000 in spring 2022. Today, after Rolex raised its retail price from $9,900 to $10,600 in January 2026, pre-owned examples cluster between $10,500 and $13,000 on Chrono24—sometimes slightly above retail, sometimes slightly below, depending on condition and dial variant. That's a return to normal. Prices for mainstream steel Rolex models are no longer untethered from retail or availability.

Why This Makes Buying a Rolex Easier

For newcomers, prices are no longer shaped by the echo of peak-pandemic speculation. For seasoned buyers, comparing modern Rolex to older references feels rational instead of distorted. Retail pricing, secondary pricing, and actual availability relate to each other in a way that's easy to follow, for the first time in half a decade.

Today, shopping for a Rolex feels less like stepping into a casino and more like making an informed decision about a watch you're actually going to wear. I can definitely get behind that.