With the festive season fast approaching, Vintage & Prestige highlight the value for money offered by extreme luxury watches in the secondary market, with a focus on ladies diamond and gem set watches.

A walk along Bond Street, Brompton Road, Fifth Avenue or Avenue Georges V, will no doubt witness some incredible diamond and precious stone set watches at eye-watering prices. These pieces are often unique, and at the very least limited in production, whether as a stand alone limited edition or special edition or likely as not, limited by the number of buyers prepared to pay the price tag.

Buying in the secondary market offers, in the main, an opportunity to purchase at significant discount. It is quite common knowledge that diamonds are traded, that diamond rings and jewellery have a lower trade in value in the short to medium term and this principle applies frequently to watches as well. However, once bought, pre-owned, the value will, likely as not, remain relatively consistent in the short term.

We will not discuss diamond dials or bezels, rather jewellery pieces which make a statement of their own. Equally, aftermarket or custom diamonds have a place and a debatable add on value, but again won’t be covered here.

We focus on some of the pieces we have acquired and are proud to offer for sale.

Diamond And Gem Set Watches

Take Van Clef & Arpels. One of the world’s most famous and sought after haute joalliere, we have on offer the heavy and large diamond set rose gold dress watch which retails for £20,000. Our price is £5995.

Similarly we have sold and have for sale a range of Chopard Happy Sports which feature diamonds floating within the dial. All of which offer a significant saving over list price.

Our Cartier Tortue features one of the most stunning cases and movements we have seen, and for sale, as a full set for less than fifty percent of equivalent retail, which would be £40,000.

Equally stunning, and recently arrived is our Pierre Kunz Cupidon, which will be discussed later, but the saving is immense. Last known to sell new at £40,000 we’ll let you do the maths!

The majority of diamond set watches have little sign of use, by definition these are dress watches but at our secondary prices, so use the saving over new prices to go on holiday and be the envy of others with your choice of time keeper.