What enthusiasts are asking

Watches under $500 on the secondhand market

A watch lands in this band because of what it goes for on the secondhand market, not because of what it cost new. That is also why there is no list of watches on this page: naming them would be publishing each one's market price, which is the one thing this surface does not do.

2026 SO FAR
+7.7%
+3.7% to +11.6%95% range
355 watches · 2,021 asks · 80 brands · revises monthly
In line with the index
Measured against the whole index, on the same watches in the same pass.
The whole index
+7.4%
2026 so far · 1,069 matched watches

The interval clears zero, so this cut is allowed to name a direction.

Year by year

Year by year change in asking prices, with 95% confidence intervals and the number of matched watches behind each reading.
YearChangeReading95% range
2026 so farrevises+7.7%355 watches · 2,021 asks · 80 brandsIn line with the index+3.7% to +11.6%
2025No clear move343 watches · 2,324 asks · 77 brandsIn line with the index-2.2% to +4.9%
2024No clear move280 watches · 1,858 asks · 72 brandsIn line with the index-5.4% to +1.7%
2023No clear move215 watches · 1,825 asks · 58 brands+3.5% vs the index-4.4% to +4.1%

Each year is compared with the one before it, over the watches listed in both. Nothing before 2022 is drawn: the older forum threads still standing are the ones nobody pruned, and the direction of that bias is unknown.

The closing-ask cross-check

+7.1%+2.4% to +14.0%2026 so far · 169 watches · 917 asks · 43 brands

A second panel, built separately from the last price a seller asked before their listing closed. A closed listing may have been withdrawn rather than bought, so this is never a sale price and the two panels are never blended.

The panel

Asking prices
2,021
against 1,624 a year earlier
Watches
355
listed in both years
Brands
80
largest is 11% of it
Turnover
38%
of the panel is different watches than last year

One vote per watch, never weighted by price. A dollar-weighted index of this panel would just be a tracker for whichever brand lists the most expensive watches.

Why there is no list of watches here

A watch lands in a price band because of what it goes for on the secondhand market, not because of its retail price. Naming the watches in a band would be publishing each one’s market price, which is the one thing this page does not do. The reading above is the whole band.

Other price bands

Bands are set from each watch's own market price, not from its retail price.

Every other cut

How this is measured

These are asking prices, not sale prices. A sale price is never observed here. Both panels are published separately and are never blended.

Matched model. A year’s change is the average change across watches listed in both that year and the one before, one vote per watch.

It follows the same watches getting older. A matched-model index of used goods carries some drift from age alone, and that drift is not measured out. Read it as what an owner holding these watches saw, not as what a model is worth new.

Full methodology · Disclosures