Is Audemars Piguet a Good Investment? The Short Answer

Audemars Piguet is one of only three luxury watch brands that historically return more than retail on the secondary market, but that performance is concentrated almost entirely in one collection. Buy a Royal Oak on the right reference and you’re likely holding an appreciating asset. Buy almost anything else in the AP catalog and you’re likely underwater against retail, sometimes by a wide margin.

Watch Value Score’s 2026 analysis, “What Every Luxury Watch Brand Returns on the Secondary Market,” found that of 21 brands studied, only Patek Philippe ($1.51 back per retail dollar), Rolex ($1.29), and Audemars Piguet ($1.19) clear break-even on average. That’s a real distinction. It puts AP in rarefied company, above brands like Omega, Cartier, and Breitling on pure resale math.

The catch is in the word “average.” Within AP’s own lineup, Watch Value Score found four models trading above retail and two below, which tells you the brand-level number is masking a split personality. That split is the entire story of this article, and it’s the reason a blanket “AP is a good investment” answer misleads more than it informs.

How AP Stacks Up Against Rolex and Patek Philippe on Resale

Rolex delivers the most consistent value retention across its catalog, Patek Philippe delivers the highest ceiling on trophy references, and Audemars Piguet sits between them with a narrower band of models doing the heavy lifting. Recent market data shows AP’s overall retention has softened faster than Rolex’s over the past year.

Diamond Banc’s 2026 report, “Rolex vs Audemars Piguet Resale Value,” which synthesizes Morgan Stanley and WatchCharts tracking data, put Rolex’s overall value retention around +6.7% above retail, against roughly +0.7% for Audemars Piguet as a brand. That’s a meaningful gap, and it’s widened compared to where the two brands sat a year or two earlier during the broader boom.

Patek Philippe remains the outlier on appreciation ceiling. Buy Your Watch’s 2025 “Value Guide for Sellers” compared the Nautilus 5711/1A against two Royal Oak references and found the Nautilus appreciating roughly 329% from its original retail price, versus about 239% for the Royal Oak 15202ST and 72% for the Royal Oak 15400ST. AP’s flagship references perform, but Patek’s flagship performs harder, and Rolex performs more predictably across a much wider range of models.

The Royal Oak Effect: Where AP’s Value Really Lives

The Royal Oak accounts for nearly all of Audemars Piguet’s positive resale performance, while the Royal Oak Offshore and Code 11.59 collections trade at persistent discounts to retail. If you strip the Royal Oak out of AP’s numbers, the brand’s investment case largely disappears.

The WatchCharts Morgan Stanley 2Q 2025 Watch Market Report, published via Quill & Pad, found the Royal Oak retaining +23.6% above retail with an average market price near $62,234, even as AP overall slipped to roughly -1.3% below retail. Accio’s October 2025 “Royal Oak Trends” analysis pushed that figure higher still, citing value retention around +27.0% and premiums approaching 25% across the collection.

Look at specific references and the pattern holds. Accio’s data lists the Royal Oak Extra-Thin 15202ST at a retail price near $20,900 against a market value around $54,426. The Royal Oak “Jumbo” 15400ST shows retail near $19,700 against a market value around $31,199. The Royal Oak Selfwinding 15510ST shows retail near $30,000 against a market value around $43,016. These are the references carrying the brand’s reputation.

Compare that to the other two collections in the same report window: Royal Oak Offshore trading roughly -22.7% below retail, and Code 11.59 trading roughly -33.3% below retail, with both trends worsening over three, six, and twelve months. That’s not a rounding error. It’s the difference between a watch that functions as a store of value and one that functions as a straightforward depreciating luxury purchase, the same category as most designer handbags or new cars.

The Cooling Market: Why AP’s Boom Years Are Behind It

Audemars Piguet’s secondary market has cooled meaningfully since its 2019-2024 run, with brand-wide value retention turning negative in mid-2025 before a partial, model-specific recovery. Collectors buying AP today should price in a slower, choppier market than the one that built the brand’s investment reputation.

Context matters here. Chrono24’s long-term analysis of the 2019 to 2024 period found Audemars Piguet secondary market prices surging an average of 64.85%, putting it alongside Vacheron Constantin and Cartier as one of the era’s top performers. That boom is what cemented AP’s investment-grade reputation among collectors and, frankly, among lenders too.

But the Morgan Stanley and WatchCharts 2Q 2025 data shows the air coming out of that trade. AP overall value retention fell to approximately -1.3% below retail, down sharply from +5.3% just one reporting period earlier in April 2025. The same report tracked AP’s average market value at about $52,782, with three-month, six-month, and one-year price changes of -1.4%, -3.1%, and -7.9% respectively. A year-over-year decline near 8% brand-wide is not a rounding fluctuation, it’s a real cooling cycle.

There’s nuance within that decline. WatchAnalytics.io’s mid-2025 secondary market report tracked an AUDEMARSPIGUET35 index reaching 649 points as of June 2025, with average AP market values rising from about €57,571 in January to €58,261 in May before a roughly 2% pullback in June. Median bid prices that same month sat near €59,284, but ranged anywhere from about €40,900 to over €120,000, which tells you the spread between entry-level AP and trophy AP has never been wider. Accio’s data adds one more wrinkle: pre-owned AP prices actually rose about 4.5% in 2025 even as the broader secondary watch market cooled roughly 2%, driven almost entirely by continued Royal Oak demand. The brand isn’t uniformly falling, it’s bifurcating.

Which AP Models to Avoid If Investment Is the Goal

Royal Oak Offshore and Code 11.59 references are the AP models most likely to lose value against retail, with discounts in the -20% to -33% range as of late 2025. If capital preservation matters to your purchase decision, these collections carry real markdown risk that the Royal Oak name doesn’t fully offset.

The Offshore’s oversized case and sportier positioning have loyal fans, and the line moves well at retail. On the secondary market it hasn’t held the discipline of the standard Royal Oak, trading around -22.7% below retail per the Morgan Stanley WatchCharts data, with the trend still worsening at the three, six, and twelve month marks. Code 11.59, AP’s newer, more design-forward line, has fared worse still, at roughly -33.3% below retail in the same report. Both collections are legitimate watches to buy and wear. Neither is a collection to buy expecting appreciation.

The practical takeaway: reference selection inside the AP catalog matters more than brand selection across the industry. A Royal Oak Extra-Thin or a well-chosen Selfwinding reference can outperform plenty of Rolex sports models on a percentage basis. A Code 11.59 chronograph, bought new, can lose a third of its value the moment it changes hands. Same logo, opposite outcome.

What This Means If You’re Borrowing Against an Audemars Piguet

An Audemars Piguet’s usefulness as loan collateral tracks its resale value almost exactly, meaning Royal Oak references appraise stronger than Royal Oak Offshore or Code 11.59 pieces. Lenders and appraisers price collateral against realistic market value, not brand prestige alone, so reference-level performance drives the loan conversation.

This is where the brand-wide averages become genuinely useful information rather than trivia. AltFN Data’s 2025 price history report, drawing on 5,134 verified sales across major auction houses including Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips, put the average AP resale price at $16,229, a figure pulled down by the broader catalog. ChronoChong’s 2025 brand comparison separately estimated AP’s average retail price near $55,946 and its share of the global secondary watch market by value at roughly 4%. Read together, those numbers confirm what the model-level data already shows: AP is a high-ticket, capital-dense brand where a relatively small number of references carry a disproportionate amount of the value.

At Beverly Loan Company, our certified gemologists and watch specialists appraise each Audemars Piguet on its own reference, condition, and documentation, the same way the secondary market does. A Royal Oak with box and papers is a different collateral conversation than a Code 11.59 chronograph, and treating them identically would misprice the loan. Loan amounts and terms are always determined case by case based on that appraisal.

So, Is Audemars Piguet Worth It? A Collector’s Framework

Audemars Piguet is worth it for collectors who buy the Royal Oak with reference-level discipline, and it’s a weaker bet for anyone drawn to the logo across the Offshore or Code 11.59 lines expecting the same outcome. Treat AP the way you’d treat a concentrated stock pick, not a diversified index.

The framework is simple once you separate the brand from the collection. If preserving or growing capital matters to the purchase, gravitate toward Royal Oak references with established secondary market track records, the 15202ST, 15400ST, 15510ST, and 26331ST families all show up repeatedly in the data cited above. If you’re buying the Offshore or Code 11.59 because you love the design, buy it, wear it, and don’t budget for appreciation. That’s not a knock on the watch, it’s an honest read of five different market reports pointing the same direction.

Against Rolex and Patek, AP’s honest position in 2026 is the middle seat: less consistent than Rolex across its full catalog, less explosive than Patek at the very top, but still one of only three brands clearing retail on average. That’s a genuinely good position to occupy in a market of 21-plus brands. It’s just not a position that rewards buying blind.