Beyond the bezel: the full cost of owning a luxury watch and the value drivers that pay for it

A luxury watch has two sets of numbers: the price on the invoice and the cost of keeping it. Over ten years the second set, which covers servicing, insurance, the dealer spread on exit and whatever tax or duty applied on the way in, adds up to roughly a third of the purchase price on a steel sports watch and the same proportion on a gold or carbon one, before the service bill. That is the hurdle a watch has to clear before ownership is anything other than consumption, and it is why the value drivers that matter are the ones that keep a reference liquid and saleable rather than the ones that sound good in a catalogue. This guide puts the costs in a table, works the numbers on three references at different price tiers, a Rolex Submariner 126610LN, a yellow gold Daytona 126508 and a Richard Mille RM 65-01, and sets out which drivers actually pay for the costs.

Last reviewed on October 12, 2026 by Filip Biczak. Prices are dated observations, not quotes.

What does a luxury watch actually cost to own over ten years?

Four cost lines recur for every mechanical watch, whatever the brand. Two are paid once, at purchase and at exit; two are paid through the holding period. The table sets out what each line is, who sets it and how it behaves against the price of the watch. The percentages are working assumptions used in the worked examples below; they are not quotes, and the right figures for a particular watch come from the brand, the insurer and the dealer who will buy it back.

The lines are not equal. Tax is the largest fixed cost on a brand new watch and vanishes on a private pre-owned purchase in some jurisdictions, which is one reason pre-owned asks sit where they do. Insurance is small each year and large over a decade. Servicing is the line most buyers forget and the only one that also protects the asset. The dealer spread is paid in a single moment, on the day the owner needs liquidity most, and it is the cost that a good reference minimises.

Service intervals and costs by brand: what Rolex, Audemars Piguet and Richard Mille publish

None of the three brands discussed here prints a full service tariff in a way that can be quoted for a specific watch without inspection, so any article that states a precise service figure for a Submariner or a Royal Oak is guessing. What the brands do publish is the interval, the guarantee and, in Richard Mille's case, a per-model price that the owner selects from a menu on the brand's own site. The table records exactly that, with the published source for each line.

Three consequences follow for a buyer. A Rolex with a ten-year interval and a five-year guarantee may need one paid service in a decade of ownership, and a watch bought new inside its guarantee may need none. An Audemars Piguet owner who registers the watch gets five years of warranty instead of two, which is worth checking on a pre-owned Royal Oak because the extension follows the watch's registration, not the invoice. A Richard Mille owner can read the service cost of the exact reference before buying, which no other brand on the list offers, and must send the watch to the brand because the warranty is void otherwise; that single-channel rule is a cost and also a value driver, since it makes a Richard Mille service history unusually easy to verify.

How much does insurance add each year?

Specialist cover for a luxury watch in the United States has typically been quoted at roughly one to two percent of the insured value per year in 2025 and 2026, varying with where the watch is kept, whether it is worn daily, the owner's claims history and the insurer's view of the reference. A homeowner's policy rarely covers a single watch at the values in this guide without a scheduled rider, and the rider is priced on the same basis. The insurer will want an appraisal or dealer invoice dated within a year or two, photographs and the serial, and will reprice when the appraisal is updated, so an appreciating watch also costs more to insure each year.

At 1.5 percent a year the arithmetic is simple and unforgiving: the premium on the Submariner in the table below is about US$237 a year, on the gold Daytona about US$1,158 and on the RM 65-01 about US$5,162, and each of those figures recurs for as long as the watch is owned. Over ten years insurance alone is about 15 percent of the purchase price, which is more than most watches appreciate in a flat market. Owners who self-insure a steel sports watch are making a rational bet; owners who self-insure a Richard Mille are not.

What is the dealer spread and why is it the largest single cost on exit?

Every dealer, auction house and platform earns the difference between what it pays for a watch and what it sells it for, and that spread is paid by the seller at the moment of exit. On a reference that trades every week in full-set, unpolished condition the spread is narrow because the dealer can price the watch with confidence and turn it quickly. On a reference that trades rarely, or a watch without papers, the spread widens because the dealer is carrying price risk and authentication risk and will build both into the offer. Our guide to selling a Rolex to a dealer explains how an offer is constructed from the current ask; the short version is that the ask is the ceiling and the offer sits below it by the dealer's margin, its reconditioning budget and its view of how long the watch will take to sell.

The spread is where the value drivers earn their keep. A current-catalogue Submariner with its card inside the guarantee period has the narrowest spread of any watch in this guide because the buying dealer knows it can resell it quickly and without an authentication question. A gold Daytona has a wider spread because the market is thinner and dial configuration matters more to the next buyer. A Richard Mille has the widest in absolute dollars because the buyer pool is small and the dealer's capital is tied up longer, though the brand's single-channel service rule narrows the authentication part of the risk. The 12 percent assumption in this guide is an illustration that sits between those cases; a seller should ask for a written cash offer before relying on any figure.

Tax and duty: the costs that depend on where you buy

• Sales tax. In the United States it is set by state and county and charged on a dealer's sale; the combined rate in Miami-Dade County, Florida, where Bizak is based, has been 7 percent. It is not recovered on resale, so it is a pure cost of the first purchase. Private sales between individuals are treated differently from dealer sales in many states, which is part of why the pre-owned market exists at the prices it does.
• VAT. In the United Kingdom and the European Union, value added tax is charged on a new watch and, under margin schemes, on a dealer's margin on a pre-owned one; rates run around 20 percent in the United Kingdom and between the high teens and the mid-twenties across the Union. A watch bought in a VAT jurisdiction and exported may qualify for a refund, which changes the arithmetic for a buyer who travels.
• Import duty and tariffs. A watch crossing a border is declared on its value and the duty depends on origin, classification and the tariff schedule in force on the day. United States tariff treatment of Swiss goods changed more than once in 2025 and 2026, and a dealer's landed cost on a brand new Swiss watch reflects whatever rate applied when that watch entered the country. The Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry publishes monthly export statistics by market and price band, which is the primary record of how those changes have moved volumes; it does not publish tariff rates, and a buyer should ask the dealer what duty, if any, was paid on the specific watch.
• Capital gains. A watch sold at a profit is a taxable disposal in most jurisdictions, usually at the rate for collectibles rather than for securities, and in some countries personal-use items below a threshold are exempt. This is the one cost line a dealer cannot quote; it belongs to the owner's accountant.

Tax is the reason the same watch has different ten-year arithmetic in Miami, London and Geneva, and why a comparison between two dealers' prices is meaningless until both are quoted on the same tax basis, delivered to the same address.

Which value drivers actually hold a price?

The drivers that matter are the ones that narrow the spread, shorten the time to sell and reduce the chance that a buyer finds a reason to pay less. The list below ranks them by how directly they act on those three outcomes; brand heritage, design language and the rest of the catalogue vocabulary sit behind all of them and are already priced into the ask.

1. Market depth. The number of buyers who want this exact reference this month. A Submariner has thousands; a particular dial on a gold Daytona has hundreds; an RM 65-01 in a particular case material has dozens. Depth sets the spread.
2. Catalogue status. A reference still in production has a retail price as an anchor; a discontinued reference has a fixed supply. Both can hold value, but they do it differently, and the transition between them, the year a reference is replaced, is when prices move most. The green-dial 116508 Daytona, which the 126508 replaced in 2023, is the textbook case: on October 12, 2026 Bizak's sourced catalogue listed a 116508 green dial at US$82,400, sourced to order, above the ask for the brand new successor in a different dial.
3. Remaining guarantee and verifiable service history. A watch inside its factory guarantee carries no service risk for the next buyer. After that, a service by the brand, documented, is worth roughly the cost of the service a buyer would otherwise budget for; our finishing and service history guide explains which brands' records can be checked.
4. Completeness. Box, card or certificate, booklets, spare links and the original receipt. On a steel Rolex the full set adds a modest percentage; on a Richard Mille the warranty card paired with the serial is close to a condition of sale.
5. Originality and finish. Unpolished cases, original dials and inserts, and bracelets without stretch. These are the items a dealer's reconditioning budget is built from, so each one that is right removes a deduction.
6. Metal and movement. Precious metal sets a floor on value well below retail but well above zero; a widely serviced movement family, such as the calibre 3235 in the current Submariner, keeps the service line predictable for decades.

Scarcity by itself is not on the list. Limited numbers hold value only when the buyers outnumber the pieces, which is a statement about demand, not about the edition size, and plenty of limited editions trade below their retail price for years.

Three references through the numbers: Submariner 126610LN, Daytona 126508 and RM 65-01

The table applies the working assumptions from the first section to three watches at three price tiers. Purchase prices are what Bizak's sourced catalogue listed on October 12, 2026, sourced to order; they describe what we saw that day and will move. The service line is left as the brand's own figure because Rolex and Audemars Piguet quote on request and Richard Mille publishes it per model on the page linked above; everything else is arithmetic on the stated assumptions and is rounded to the nearest dollar.

The percentages come out the same across the three tiers because the assumptions scale with price; the dollars do not. On the Submariner the ten-year cost is about the price of a good holiday and the service bill is a fraction of it. On the gold Daytona the cost before servicing is more than the price of a brand new steel Submariner. On the Richard Mille it is a six-figure sum, and the service figure that Richard Mille publishes for the RM 65-01 belongs in the owner's spreadsheet before the watch is bought, not after. The Daytona row also shows how much of a dealer's catalogue spread is dial rather than condition: the gap between US$45,012 and US$77,189 for the same reference in yellow gold mixes dial configuration, set and whether the watch is new, and a buyer comparing two gold Daytona asks must know which dial each one is before the numbers mean anything. The Daytona 126500LN guide covers the steel sibling and the Richard Mille price guide sets out how the RM range is priced across case materials.

What return does a watch need just to break even?

If the four cost lines come to about 34 percent of the purchase price over ten years before servicing, the watch's dealer ask has to rise by about that much, roughly 3 percent a year compounded, for the owner to get the purchase price back after the exit spread, and more once the service is added. That is the whole case for buying the watch you want to wear: a reference that holds its price in nominal terms over a decade has, net of costs, lost about a third, and a reference that gains 30 percent has roughly broken even. The references that have beaten that hurdle in the past decade are the ones with the deepest markets and the narrowest spreads, which is why the drivers in the section above are ranked as they are, and why a watch that appreciates on paper but cannot be sold quickly at the quoted ask has not appreciated at all.

Two adjustments move the hurdle. Buying pre-owned at a discount to the new ask removes some or all of the sales tax line in many jurisdictions and starts the holding period closer to the exit price, so the spread is paid on a smaller base. Buying inside the guarantee and selling before the service is due removes the service line altogether, which is a strategy some collectors run deliberately on current-catalogue Rolex references; it works only while the reference stays in production and the market stays deep.

Buying checks that protect the return

• Ask what tax was charged and whether the watch was imported. Two asks are comparable only on the same tax basis, delivered to the same address.
• Read the guarantee date, not the purchase date. A Rolex card dated recently gives the next buyer up to five years without service risk; an AP watch registered for the five-year extension transfers that value if the registration follows the watch.
• Get the service figure before buying a complicated or precious-metal watch. For a Richard Mille, read the published figure for the exact reference on the brand's servicing page; for a Rolex or AP chronograph, ask the service centre for an indicative range after it has seen the watch.
• Confirm the service channel. A Richard Mille serviced outside the brand's network has lost its warranty and most of its market; a Rolex serviced by an unnamed workshop has an open question over replaced parts.
• Price the set, not the watch. Box, card, booklets, links and receipt each remove a deduction on exit; a watch-only example should be priced as watch-only on both the way in and the way out.
• Ask for a written cash offer alongside the ask. The difference is the real spread for that reference on that day, and it is the only way to test the 12 percent assumption used here.
• Insure on a dated appraisal and update it. Underinsurance saves a small premium and costs the full gap on a claim.
• Check the condition items a dealer deducts for. Polished cases, replaced inserts and stretched bracelets are each a line on the reconditioning budget; our authentication process describes what we inspect before dispatch.

Quick answers

How much does it cost to own a luxury watch per year?

On the assumptions in this guide, about 1.5 percent of the value in insurance each year, plus a one-off sales tax at purchase, a brand service once or twice a decade, and a dealer spread on exit; together about a third of the purchase price over ten years before the service bill.

How often does a Rolex need servicing and what does it cost?

Rolex recommends a service approximately every ten years and gives a five-year guarantee on a new watch. It does not publish service prices; a Rolex service centre quotes after examining the watch.

Does Richard Mille publish service prices?

Yes. The Richard Mille servicing page has a drop-down menu that returns the service price for a selected model, and states that any service outside the brand's network voids the warranty.

How much return does a watch need to break even?

Roughly a third over ten years, or about 3 percent a year compounded, to recover the purchase price after tax, insurance and the dealer spread, and more once a service is paid for.

Which value drivers matter most for resale?

Market depth, catalogue status, remaining guarantee or verifiable brand service history, completeness of the set and originality of case, dial and bracelet. Scarcity helps only where demand exceeds the pieces.

Request a sourcing quote with the costs set out

Tell us the reference, dial, condition and whether a full set is required, plus your budget, delivery address and timing, through our sourcing enquiry form. We confirm the specific watch, photographs, papers, the tax basis and the final price before you commit, and we can quote a cash-buy figure alongside the ask so the spread is known in advance. Catalogue entries: Submariner 126610LN, Daytona 126508 yellow gold, Richard Mille RM 65-01 carbon; browse the Submariner collection, the Daytona collection, the Richard Mille collection, or sell or trade your watch.

Related reading: Authentication, ownership costs and a buying framework · Finishing and service history · Rolex price guide · How to sell a Rolex.