Why the Vacheron Constantin Overseas may be 2021’s smartest watch investment: the surprise Swiss luxury timepiece set to double in value after Instagram influencers took a shine

Nov 9 , 2021

The luxury watch resale market has been on a tear this year, led by popular brands like Rolex. But the Vacheron Constantin Overseas has become a standout of 2021, and is on track to double in value. Photo: aBlogtoWatch/Youtube

Rolex is the undisputed king of the Swiss luxury watch world. The brand commands roughly a quarter of the entire market for new watch sales – nearly double the runner-up – and practically all of its models tend to increase in value in the resale market.

A sure-fire investment? A golden and steel Rolex Datejust. Photo: Shutterstock

And compared with collector favourites like Audemars Piguet and Patek Philippe, which tend to cost several tens of thousands of dollars to start, Rolex has several models that come in more affordably below US$10,000.

But those prices also depend on actually finding a watch that is available to buy, and that scarcity is leading prices on once-affordable Rolexes to climb out of reach for collectors at a price point they expect will have room to appreciate.

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The Overseas 4500 is 2021’s surprise timepiece hit. Photo: Vacheron Constantin

“These collectors are looking for alternatives,” Charles Tian, the founder of listings website WatchCharts. “So overall, the whole watch market is boosted by this interest in the high end in the upper echelon.”

Although no other brand competes with Rolex’s brand-wide popularity, collectors do tend to coalesce around specific models from other makers, leading some to see a lift from the heightened interest in the secondary market.

Vacheron Constantin’s Overseas stainless steel sport is one of the stand-out hits in this year’s wild market. Fuelled in part by its popularity on Instagram, the Overseas 4500V is on track to double in value this year, according to WatchCharts.

Tian also said his company’s posts featuring the watch were some of the best-performing posts ever on Instagram.

Vacheron Constantin’s Overseas 4500V is gaining value rapidly. Photo: Chrono24

The Geneva-based brand first launched the Overseas collection in 1996, but the company has been continuously making watches for more than 265 years and was a technological innovator in its own right, decades before Hans Wilsdorf kicked off the scientific juggernaut that is Rolex.

Tian says he saw one Overseas for sale at his local Vacheron dealer just before the pandemic for a retail price of US$22,000.

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How much collectors are paying for the Vacheron Constantin’s Overseas 4500V. Photo: WatchCharts

“Now, the market we show is US$36,000 to US$37,000 and the wait-list is like five years,” he said. “So yeah, this watch is getting more interest from collectors.”

The surge in popularity has become a turn-off for some longer-term followers of the brand, such as the watch blog ScrewCrownDown, which deemed the company a “hype brand” that increasingly caters to social-media influencers.

Jeremy Strong was spotted wearing Vacheron Constantin’s Overseas on HBO’s Succession. Cue mania. Photo: HBO

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One way or another, the brand is having a cultural moment, appearing on the wrist of Jeremy Strong as Kendall Roy in HBO’s Succession, and causing others to tweet their regret at missed opportunities.

“Should’ve got that Overseas Vacheron two years ago when I saw it,” one watch fan wrote. “Colossal error.”

This article originally appeared on Business Insider.

Timepieces

Rolex is the undisputed royalty of the Swiss luxury watch world, with nearly all its models guaranteed to rise in value on the resale market
But Vacheron Constantin’s Overseas 4500V has been 2021’s surprise timepiece trend since going influencer-viral (and appearing on Jeremy Strong’s wrist in HBO’s Succession)