Until the early 1990s, the market for high-quality, pre-owned wristwatches barely existed. Collectors were largely focused on “antique” pocket watches, most people who bought a wristwatch bought it for life, and relatively few of us fancied the idea of adorning our arms with someone else’s pre-worn cast-off.

Things changed dramatically on 9 April 1989, when Antiquorum staged a special auction to mark Patek Philippe’s 150th anniversary. The sale raised an unprecedented $15m from 300 lots, proving beyond doubt that the right second-hand wristwatches were things worth owning.

Since then, good-quality clockwork has experienced a renaissance that has seen historic makes and models being revived, sent production numbers soaring and (with much help from the internet) created a global army of enthusiasts. Manufacturers happily surfed the wave of the horological boom during the first two decades of this century – but now that sales of new watches have slowed, many are setting out to capture a slice of the lucrative second-hand market they had previously ignored.

The terms “used” and “second-hand” grate a bit in the rarefied world of luxury, so “previously loved” watches sold by the brands that originally made them are typically referred to as “certified pre-owned” – meaning they are often in near-new condition, have been fully serviced, are guaranteed authentic and usually come with a warranty. It’s a model that carmakers adopted years ago with their “approved used” offerings, but it wasn’t until 2016 that a young brand called Linde Werdelin established today’s certified pre-owned trend in the watch sector.

© Breitling

“I think it’s accurate to say that Linde Werdelin was the very first brand to sell certified, pre-owned pieces when we started to do so back in May 2016,” says Jorn Werdelin, co-founder of the Swiss-made, Danish-rooted company. “We were resetting our business model at the time, and one of the things that came out of that was the realisation that it has always been considered perfectly normal to be able to part-exchange a pre-owned car for a new one, and for the garage to sell the old one on with a certain amount of warranty.”

“Why, we thought, can’t it be the same in the watch business? We couldn’t see a reason not to do it, so we tried to figure out typical market prices for different pre-owned models,” recalls Werdelin. “Once we had done that, we decided to add 10 to 20 per cent to account for the fact that every watch we offered would be authenticated, checked, serviced, guaranteed, and supplied on a new strap. People caught on very quickly, and we soon discovered that being able to buy a pre-owned Linde Werdelin gave people an entry point to the brand. They didn’t have to buy new and risk not falling in love with the watch but, equally, starting with a used Linde Werdelin could help them become a real fan of what we do.”

© Rolex

Since then, many major dial names have gone down the “certified pre-owned” route, the most unexpected of which was Rolex, which announced its programme in 2022. Originally available only from selected official retailers in Switzerland, Austria, Germany, France, Denmark, Belgium and the UK, Rolex Certified Pre-Owned is now offered in several other markets, with each watch being sold with a guarantee of authenticity and a two-year warranty. Buyers also get a travel pouch, a service booklet and a green and white wax seal denoting the pre-owned status of their purchase.

The move to CPO upset some pre-owned dealers who have made impressive profits by selling second-hand Rolex pieces of dubious provenance because, although it might be more expensive, any watch sold by the brand itself comes with the assurance that it will be 100 per cent genuine.

While Rolex focuses mainly on reselling watches from its recent or current catalogue, other makers lean towards vintage with their CPO offerings. Cartier, for example, introduced its certified pre-owned programme at its New Bond Street, London store in 2019, with a small but perfectly curated selection of some of its most celebrated creations produced from 1973 to 2014. Despite the age of some of the pieces, managing director Laurent Feniou insists that they are all serviced, guaranteed for authenticity and supplied with a two-year warranty. At the time of writing, pieces on offer included a 1973 Tank Normale in yellow gold at £34,100 and a 2014 Santos-Dumont LM with a pink-gold, diamond-set case at £48,400.

In November of last year, meanwhile, Vacheron Constantin – which has long offered a manufacture-based service to renovate and repair vintage models – joined the CPO fray with the added promise of no-cost repair or replacement of any part that fails. Each watch is also supplied with a blockchain-powered “digital passport” that contains its unique information, including ownership, service history and historical information from the maker’s comprehensive archive. As well as selling the pre-owned pieces at its boutiques and authorised retailers, the Richemont-owned company is also offering existing Vacheron Constantin owners the opportunity to trade in their watches for a CPO model through the group-owned e-tailing platform Watchfinder.

© Vacheron Constantin

Another Richemont stablemate, Jaeger-LeCoultre, took a different approach to selling pre-owned pieces with the launch of its Collectibles selection to mark its 190th anniversary in January 2023. The first stage of the project offered 17 beautifully restored watches from the 1920s to the 1970s, including ground-breaking models such as the flip-case Reverso, the self-winding Futurematic and the Memovox alarm watch at prices ranging from around £20,000 to £50,000. Unveiled alongside a comprehensive book describing each model in detail, the collection was followed by a further small tranche of exceptional pieces from the maker’s past, bringing the total available to 33. The success of the project saw every watch find a buyer, and a third instalment is now anticipated.

Richard Mille, meanwhile, may only have been launched in the year 2001, but many of its low-volume models have already achieved modern vintage status and can be both hugely valuable and difficult to get hold of. Their collectability was acknowledged by the brand itself with the 2020 launch of Ninety, its pre-owned boutique in Mount Street, in the heart of London’s Mayfair. With few Richard Mille watches being worth less than six figures (and some being valued in the millions) there are obvious pitfalls to buying used examples of these highly technical pieces from unknown sources. With that in mind, the brand opened Ninety as its first authorised, pre-owned dealership in Europe.

“The first Richard Mille prototypes were only made in 2000,” says Tilly Harrison, who launched and manages the boutique. “But, as the years went by, we began to receive more and more requests for pre-owned, discontinued or difficult-to-obtain models and noticed that the more historical pieces were growing in importance and attracting interest from serious collectors. Really early models, such as the RM-02 and 03, were made in tiny numbers and are now very sought-after. We get calls from around the world from people looking for the hard-to-find and unusual pieces, such as the carbon TPT armour-cased RM 53-01 made with polo player Pablo Mac Donough, or the RM68-01 tourbillon with a movement painted by graffiti artist Cyril Kongo. It cost $685,000 new and can now fetch as much as $2m – but we get asked for it quite frequently.”

© Breitling

More affordable, however, were the nine watches with which Breitling debuted its CPO programme at November’s ReLuxury and Barnes Preloved Show in Paris. The vintage selection included rarities such as a Navitimer Mk 2.2, a Cosmonaute Mk6 space watch and a special Chrono-Matic designed for yacht racing. Prices ranged from around £5,000 to £12,000, and while the introduction of a pre-owned offering is primarily designed to enable enthusiasts to acquire a vintage watch with all the benefits of a new one, it also – says the reformed brand once famous for sponsoring a squadron of acrobatic fighter jets – “bears testament to our dedication to sustainability”, a sentiment that is increasingly common across the industry.