Which Rolex holds its value best? Retail, market and long-run sales

"Holds its value" can mean two different things, and the answer changes with the definition.

1. Against what you would pay new. If you bought at list price today, how close is the pre-owned market to that price?
2. Over many years. If you look back across a decade or more of sales, how far has the market price moved?

We answer both from our own sold results: 108,034 of them, from eBay sold listings and auction houses, plus a forum archive back to 2006 for long-run history. This describes what prices have done. It is not financial advice.

How we measure it

Market price is our "worth about" figure: a recency-weighted median of sold prices, normalised to a pre-owned watch with box and papers. It never uses asking prices.

List price comes from published retail price lists, shown as each reference page shows it: the French list price, in local currency and including VAT, from January 2026 lists (41watch, cross-checked with Monochrome Watches). We don't use a US list, and we never read prices from the brand's own site.

That means the two numbers are in different currencies. The "Market vs list" column below converts each French list price into US terms at the European Central Bank reference rate for its list date and compares it with the worth-about figure. The list includes French VAT and our figure is a pre-owned sale price, so VAT raises only the list side, so a market figure a little below list can come from tax alone, and a small gap either way from the exchange rate. Read only the larger gaps as a real premium or discount. Where a list price depends on dial or bracelet, the column gives a figure for each end of the list.

Against list price, reference by reference

Steel sports references

These are the models people most often expect to trade above list: the steel Cosmograph Daytona, the steel GMT-Master II Batgirl, the two current Submariners and the Oyster Perpetual 36. The last column shows how far each actually sits from its list price today, after the currency conversion. A large positive figure is a premium no exchange rate explains; a figure near zero means the market and the list price roughly agree.

Everyday steel references

If you are selling rather than buying, our guide to Rolex resale value covers what moves the price of your own watch. These are widely searched references; each reference page shows how many sold results stand behind its figure. Where the market vs list figure is small, paying list for one of these has been close to the pre-owned price. Either way, for a seller the market price, not the list price, is the number to plan around.

Gold and professional references

Three of these are solid gold: the white gold Day-Date 40, the Everose GMT-Master II and the white gold Yacht-Master 42. The other two are steel professional models, the Sea-Dweller and the D-Blue Deepsea. Comparing the two groups tests whether steel alone carries a premium; the market vs list column answers it for each watch.

Trading below list is not the same as falling. Compare the market vs list column with the twelve-month change: a reference can sit below its list price and still have risen over the year, because it started from a list price the used market doesn't match.

Over the long run: references with the deepest history

For discontinued references there is no list price to compare with, so the useful measure is the long-run change in sold prices. These figures come from the earliest series with enough sales for each reference, and each names its series: a forum figure is the listed price when the post was marked sold, not a confirmed sale price.

Compare the long-run change column across the set. The two-tone Datejust 16233 is there as a check on whether long-run gains belong only to sports models: read its row against the steel Submariners and the GMT-Master II.

Starting years differ, so compare these figures with care. A reference whose history starts in 2008 began near a low point in prices; one that starts later began higher. That alone can make one look stronger than another.

What the data does not say

• No cause. We can show where each reference trades against its list price. We can't show why from sales data alone. Monochrome's January 2026 price-list coverage reports that gold models saw larger list-price increases than steel ones that year, which is one piece of context, not an explanation.
• No forecast. A reference that held value in the past may not in the future. Time+Tide's summary of the Morgan Stanley and WatchCharts report noted falls across the secondary market in 2023 and 2024 before a recovery in 2025.
• Different series, different meaning. A long-run figure from auction results and one from forum listings are not the same kind of price. The reference page names the series behind each figure and shows its sales counts, so check it before comparing two references directly.
• Not your watch. Condition, box and papers and service history move a single watch's price. Our ranges assume a pre-owned watch with box and papers; a watch-only sale typically sells 13% lower in our measurements.

A quick way to judge any reference

Our Rolex cost page lists every current reference with its list price, which is the starting point for the first question. For a watch you already own, the reference page and our sell page show where it sits today.