Prices of luxury items tend to creep up every year, and new Rolex watches are no exception. While many savvy collectors are turning to pre-owned Rollies—driven by resale sites like Bob’s Watches and Swiss Watch Expo—retail prices for brand-new models are unsurprisingly ticking upward as we enter 2025.
Hypebeast reports that the vaunted GMT-Master II, both the “Pepsi” bezel with black dial as well as the newfangled black and gray ceramic bezel model dropped at Watches & Wonders Geneva last year, “have marked up their prices $100 more (around a 0.9 percent increase on average). The Oyster bracelet option now retails for $10,800, while the Jubilee variant is priced at $11,000.”
The style-obsessed site has more details here, after reviewing Rolex’s website updates in early January 2025:
Another popular Rolex reference, the Daytona, went from $15,100 USD in 2024 to $15,500 USD for its steel and Oyster bracelet option — a noticeable increase of $400 USD (around 2.6%). A similar change is also reflected in the UK market, with the same reference now retailing at £13,600 GBP, which is 3% more than its £13,200 GBP price tag in 2024.
In the case of a date-less Oystersteel Submariner in with black dial and bezel, the reference now retails for $9,200 USD in the US and £8,100 GBP in the UK. This marks a 1% increase in the US and a 0.62 percent increase respectively for the model year-on-year.
Meanwhile, the Explorer II’s new price tag is $9,750, which is a 1 percent increase from its price in 2024.
The uptick in prices for new Rolexes follows a serious surge in demand for pre-owned models. The Rolex GMT Master II in “Root Beer,” Rolex “Pepsi” GMT Master II and Rolex Explorer Oyster Perpetual “Polar” all experienced triple-digit trend growth last year, according to the latest year-end report from Bob’s Watches, which analyzed pre-owned watch data from 2020 to 2024.
The “Root Beer” model saw 2024 growth of 433 percent, while the “Pepsi” saw a 135 percent boost, and demand for the “Polar” spiked by 157 percent. Previously popular styles like the “Hulk” saw “flat growth in 2024 after moderate increases in previous years,” the marketplace noted.
