The latest stats from the Watch Register, worth noting by any any HNW brokers. Despite the recent fall in Swiss watch values, both new and used, these items remains prime targets for organised criminals, and casual, often armed, street robbery specialists.
The Watch Register, which holds the world’s largest and most established international database of lost and stolen watches, reports that last year the organisation added an additional £150 million worth of lost or stolen luxury watches with unique serial numbers to its global platform, bringing the total value of registered watches to £1.6 billion. The value of those watches reported from UK losses over the last 12 months amounts to around £60 million.
The £1.6 billion total value includes a number of high-value luxury watches that individually retail between £50,000 to £100,000 or more. In the last 12 months the top 10 luxury timepieces registered as lost or stolen on the database were all Richard Mille watches, with a combined estimated value of more than £2.4 million. The most expensive watch registered during 2024 is a stolen Richard Mille 72-01, which has an estimated open market value of £300,000.
The top five highest value lost and stolen watches located by The Watch Register in the last year are all Patek Philippe and have a combined resale value of £450,000. Four out of five of these watches were located in a different country from the one in which they had been stolen, and two of the watches had crossed continents.
Since 2023, over 30,000 lost and stolen luxury timepieces with unique serial numbers have been registered on The Watch Register database. The increase in the volume of watches on The Watch Register has seen the platform successfully identify over 1,200 lost and stolen watches in the last 12 months. This represents an increase of 70% on the previous year’s success rate, and represents 31% of the company’s overall track record from the last 10 years.
Aside from the sharing of historic data by insurers and police, the number of new registrations of lost and stolen luxury watches on The Watch Register’s platform shows no sign of slowing down. Last year (2024), The Watch Register saw on average 21 high-end watches newly recorded every day as being missing or stolen, compared with an average of 19 luxury watches added each day during 2022-2023. By comparison, the average in 2021 was 12 per day.
Katya Hills, Managing Director at The Watch Register, commented: “The last year has seen our global database continue to grow with the integration of historic data from international law enforcement organisations and insurance companies. As a company we are continuously improving the overall size and comprehensiveness of the database in order to provide the most reliable resource possible to our users.
“The £1.6 billion value of the watches registered with us demonstrates the active measures that victims, insurers and police are taking to track down stolen watches and tackle luxury watch crime. Our database is trusted by businesses and buyers across the US, Europe, and Asia to conduct quick and dependable theft checks in real time. Furthermore, our investigative team oversees all close serial number matches flagged by the database to assist our users and sellers in the chain when a stolen watch is found.”
The Watch Register database, which offers a global 24/7 service, provides a simple way for purchasers of pre-owned watches to check if a watch offered for sale is reported stolen. The Watch Register combines sophisticated computer algorithms with human expertise and intervention to actively identify lost and stolen watches on the global pre-owned market. The database is used by watch dealers, jewellers, pawnbrokers and auction houses to identify stolen watches prior to transactions. From the moment a stolen watch is located, The Watch Register’s specialist recoveries team steps in to secure the watch and facilitate a recovery for the rightful owner.
Fifty per cent of watches The Watch Register finds are located within a year of the theft and 35% within six months. One third of the stolen watches located by The Watch Register database are offered with box and papers, many of which are fake, therefore buyers should not assume that the presence of paperwork indicates legitimacy of ownership.
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