MoonSwatch eBay sales analysis

Houston, We Have MoonSwatch Data

It is fair to say that Swatch's recent release of the Omega Speedmaster-inspired "MoonSwatch" is, thusfar, 2022's highwater mark for consume...

www.horolonomics.com

Hey watchcrunch family, I took a deep dive on data from over $1.5 million in MoonSwatch sales on eBay.  I wrote up my analysis and conclusions at the link here.  If you have a chance to read, comment and share I thank you!

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What a great read. Interesting to see that buyers act as though it's a necessity. Am I correct that you propose brands auction a portion of their watches on eBay and then adjust prices accordingly?

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This is the egg-headery that I am here for. It was an interesting read and so much better than the "Swatch is stupid" analysis that we were treated to for a week.  

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MelvinHollenberg

What a great read. Interesting to see that buyers act as though it's a necessity. Am I correct that you propose brands auction a portion of their watches on eBay and then adjust prices accordingly?

Thank you for reading and commenting.  Yes, one possibility is to do an early launch by auction and gather data from that which you then use the results to determine pricing and production volume.  It would result in far less frustration for buyers, less flipping, and probably more revenue.  

Given that Patek sold a Tiffany 5711 at auction before it was available at retail, we may head in that direction.

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Aurelian

This is the egg-headery that I am here for. It was an interesting read and so much better than the "Swatch is stupid" analysis that we were treated to for a week.  

Thank you for reading and commenting.  #eggheadfam .

☺️

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I'm all for the fun of the Moonswatch and I think Swatch did a clever thing in general terms (so that's where I'm coming from), but I can't imagine paying close to $1000 for something that scratches super-easily and really needs to be coddled so it doesn't end up looking like a pile of garbage after a fortnight. Even the retail price is a little high on them. I think at $200 they're a good enough, disposable piece of fun.

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Good read. Never bought into the hype myself, it’s just a plastic watch at the end of the day and as a collector of 40 odd years I’m a little bit more conservative with my money. I’m an old bastard who has worked hard for my money so I wouldn’t ever splash out $260 for a plastic watch. I’d rather buy myself a few nice bottles of wine and a cigar or two and enjoy the company of some good friends than line up or over pay for a MoonSwatch 💯

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Thanks for the interesting read. I agree this is the type of 🥚- head stuff I like here. It would be interesting to see this for other hyped releases, but I’m guessing the fairly large number of EBay transactions for this watch made for better data to judge. Given the premium for the MoonSwatch over typical Swatch watches, it does show market demand is a complex thing not really driven by intrinsic value, but rather social group behavior. I think it was also interesting that this demand seemed to be worldwide. A function of the internet, I guess. 

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Reminds me of the launches of certain types of sneakers, often celebrity-designed, inspired, or at least worn once by a famous person. My sister-in-law would visit my local mall quite often, in hopes to resell these sneakers in Florida.

That being said: It will be interesting to see how this will unfold over time.

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I wanted one, but the more I read about them the less I want one. That's fine, I mean I have a Speedy Pro anyways, I just fancied one in some mad colour. :) 

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This was a really interesting read. Thanks for this 👍

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Great well thought out article. An interesting read that will take me the rest of the morning to read the all the others.🙏

I had already bought a new Swatch chrono at Jomashop the week before for $60.00 so i wasn't excited about them. 

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Fascinating read. Waited in line at King of Prussia PA that first night. Purely for the fun of it. The more time goes by, the less I want one. 

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This is great work! Would love to see the same with rolex OP

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Great read - thanks for posting. I'm really interested to see how this all ends up playing out over time. 

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Interesting read. A few thoughts came to mind, and I don't know how they factor in or complicate the picture. This is all based on pure supposition of course. The MoonSwatch release was a perfect storm with many variables that are extremely difficult to tease out, or even identify. 

Could Swatch or Omega have predicted the response? Sure, they were going for publicity and hype, but could they have imagined the extent, thousands of people outside of every Swatch store worldwide? They may have be as blindsided as anyone. 

The release was leaked. I suppose the leak could have been fabricated. But presuming it wasn't, they had planned on announcing the watches on the day they became available in stores. There wouldn't have been time for excitement to build and crowds to form. How would it have played in that case? 

Part of the hype price was driven by the sight of mobs of thousands clamoring for the watch. An online auction or some such, with no visible mobs, is a different environment with different boundary conditions (as my physicist parents would say) which would lead to a different outcome. What prices would these have achieved in that case? 

Even if they predicted a short supply, there's a limit to how high they can price the watches. If they had priced them at say $800 at launch, there would have been howls of gouging for cheap plastic quartz, and profiteering on the Moonwatch name. There was some of that already, but it would have been multiples worse. It's a bad look and and bad PR. Rolex doesn't price Daytonas at $40k, probably with good reason. And that price is not sustainable. They would have had to drop prices two weeks later, which is also not a good look.

Anyway, some idle musing on my part. 

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complication

I'm all for the fun of the Moonswatch and I think Swatch did a clever thing in general terms (so that's where I'm coming from), but I can't imagine paying close to $1000 for something that scratches super-easily and really needs to be coddled so it doesn't end up looking like a pile of garbage after a fortnight. Even the retail price is a little high on them. I think at $200 they're a good enough, disposable piece of fun.

I'm not willing to pay $1k either, hoping at some point I can get one at retail online.

Thanks for reading and commenting!

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Robcollects

Thanks for the interesting read. I agree this is the type of 🥚- head stuff I like here. It would be interesting to see this for other hyped releases, but I’m guessing the fairly large number of EBay transactions for this watch made for better data to judge. Given the premium for the MoonSwatch over typical Swatch watches, it does show market demand is a complex thing not really driven by intrinsic value, but rather social group behavior. I think it was also interesting that this demand seemed to be worldwide. A function of the internet, I guess. 

Thanks for reading and commenting!  I agree with what you've written.  You're right, this particular release lends itself to this kind of analysis because so many examples were sold on eBay.  ☺️

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hbein2022

Reminds me of the launches of certain types of sneakers, often celebrity-designed, inspired, or at least worn once by a famous person. My sister-in-law would visit my local mall quite often, in hopes to resell these sneakers in Florida.

That being said: It will be interesting to see how this will unfold over time.

Thanks for reading and commenting, I agree with your remarks.  Definitely reminiscent of sneaker releases

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hoffman010

This was a really interesting read. Thanks for this 👍

Thanks for reading and commenting I'm glad you liked it!

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OldSnafu

Great well thought out article. An interesting read that will take me the rest of the morning to read the all the others.🙏

I had already bought a new Swatch chrono at Jomashop the week before for $60.00 so i wasn't excited about them. 

Thanks so much for reading and commenting.  🙏🏽

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dfhaughey

Fascinating read. Waited in line at King of Prussia PA that first night. Purely for the fun of it. The more time goes by, the less I want one. 

Thank you for reading and commenting, I'm glad you enjoyed it.

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OTNCBC

This is great work! Would love to see the same with rolex OP

Thanks for reading and commenting!  I will try to look at Rolex OP too.  That may be a little more challenging because as price goes up it looks like sellers start to use a whole lot of other platforms.

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tempus

Great read - thanks for posting. I'm really interested to see how this all ends up playing out over time. 

Thanks for reading, I'm glad you liked it!  I agree, the next month or so should be really interesting.

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wilfried

Interesting read. A few thoughts came to mind, and I don't know how they factor in or complicate the picture. This is all based on pure supposition of course. The MoonSwatch release was a perfect storm with many variables that are extremely difficult to tease out, or even identify. 

Could Swatch or Omega have predicted the response? Sure, they were going for publicity and hype, but could they have imagined the extent, thousands of people outside of every Swatch store worldwide? They may have be as blindsided as anyone. 

The release was leaked. I suppose the leak could have been fabricated. But presuming it wasn't, they had planned on announcing the watches on the day they became available in stores. There wouldn't have been time for excitement to build and crowds to form. How would it have played in that case? 

Part of the hype price was driven by the sight of mobs of thousands clamoring for the watch. An online auction or some such, with no visible mobs, is a different environment with different boundary conditions (as my physicist parents would say) which would lead to a different outcome. What prices would these have achieved in that case? 

Even if they predicted a short supply, there's a limit to how high they can price the watches. If they had priced them at say $800 at launch, there would have been howls of gouging for cheap plastic quartz, and profiteering on the Moonwatch name. There was some of that already, but it would have been multiples worse. It's a bad look and and bad PR. Rolex doesn't price Daytonas at $40k, probably with good reason. And that price is not sustainable. They would have had to drop prices two weeks later, which is also not a good look.

Anyway, some idle musing on my part. 

Thanks for reading and commenting!  Really interesting responses.  A few of my thoughts:

Interesting read. A few thoughts came to mind, and I don't know how they factor in or complicate the picture. This is all based on pure supposition of course. The MoonSwatch release was a perfect storm with many variables that are extremely difficult to tease out, or even identify. 

Could Swatch or Omega have predicted the response? Sure, they were going for publicity and hype, but could they have imagined the extent, thousands of people outside of every Swatch store worldwide? They may have be as blindsided as anyone. 

>>>>

My thinking on this one is that an auction will help you predict a response.  With an auction, you get all kinds of data about underbidders, etc.  

>>>>

The release was leaked. I suppose the leak could have been fabricated. But presuming it wasn't, they had planned on announcing the watches on the day they became available in stores. There wouldn't have been time for excitement to build and crowds to form. How would it have played in that case? 

>>>

I think there was still a pre-release announcement planned and that was pre-empted by the leaks.  For example, Swatch published a teaser on their IG March 21 and there were newspaper teasers even before that.  They were definitely feeding the hype.

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Part of the hype price was driven by the sight of mobs of thousands clamoring for the watch. An online auction or some such, with no visible mobs, is a different environment with different boundary conditions (as my physicist parents would say) which would lead to a different outcome. What prices would these have achieved in that case? 

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Maybe but I'm not sure.  You'd need some kind of crowd arrival analysis, ie, did people seeing the crowds lead to more crowds.  It kind of looked like the advertising prelaunch was enough to build the crowd.

Auctions can feed this same kind of hype but in a different way.  The Patek Tiffany auction is a good example, $5M paid for a watch available at retail for way way less.  There were no lines. 

I know of at least one person who walked away when they saw the crowd.  There was also backlash, a lot of comments talked about bad experiences in the crowd.  One guy in asia (I think) was screaming at police to shoot him because he couldn't get a watch.  It's not clear that crowds are good for a launch.

>>>

Even if they predicted a short supply, there's a limit to how high they can price the watches. If they had priced them at say $800 at launch, there would have been howls of gouging for cheap plastic quartz, and profiteering on the Moonwatch name. There was some of that already, but it would have been multiples worse. It's a bad look and and bad PR. Rolex doesn't price Daytonas at $40k, probably with good reason. And that price is not sustainable. They would have had to drop prices two weeks later, which is also not a good look.

>>>>

Rolex does price Daytonas at $40k, more actually (below)!  This is a question of framing.  Brands just need to say: either flippers get the revenue or we do and it's better that we do because we can pay our watchmakers more.  Something like that.  The price is going to end up being above artificially low retail no matter what the brand does.  The question is who receives that price?

>>>

Anyway, some idle musing on my part. 

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Fun interacting, my responses are not argumentative and I hope they don't come across that way.  Thanks for sharing time with me on this topic.

 

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wilfried

Interesting read. A few thoughts came to mind, and I don't know how they factor in or complicate the picture. This is all based on pure supposition of course. The MoonSwatch release was a perfect storm with many variables that are extremely difficult to tease out, or even identify. 

Could Swatch or Omega have predicted the response? Sure, they were going for publicity and hype, but could they have imagined the extent, thousands of people outside of every Swatch store worldwide? They may have be as blindsided as anyone. 

The release was leaked. I suppose the leak could have been fabricated. But presuming it wasn't, they had planned on announcing the watches on the day they became available in stores. There wouldn't have been time for excitement to build and crowds to form. How would it have played in that case? 

Part of the hype price was driven by the sight of mobs of thousands clamoring for the watch. An online auction or some such, with no visible mobs, is a different environment with different boundary conditions (as my physicist parents would say) which would lead to a different outcome. What prices would these have achieved in that case? 

Even if they predicted a short supply, there's a limit to how high they can price the watches. If they had priced them at say $800 at launch, there would have been howls of gouging for cheap plastic quartz, and profiteering on the Moonwatch name. There was some of that already, but it would have been multiples worse. It's a bad look and and bad PR. Rolex doesn't price Daytonas at $40k, probably with good reason. And that price is not sustainable. They would have had to drop prices two weeks later, which is also not a good look.

Anyway, some idle musing on my part. 

Could Swatch or Omega have predicted the response? Sure, they were going for publicity and hype, but could they have imagined the extent, thousands of people outside of every Swatch store worldwide? They may have be as blindsided as anyone. 

Perhaps they may not have fully anticipated the demand, but if they really thought that what little supply they apparently actually  had available was going to be sufficient to cover the demand after all of the pre-launch hype, I'd like to be able to find some of whatever it is that they were smoking.