Story Highlight
– 10,000 luxury watches logged in 2025’s database.
– Database helps identify lost or stolen pre-owned watches.
– Online checks increased 29% year-on-year for watches.
– Rolex is most targeted brand, 44% of total checks.
– 1,375 watches identified as stolen, 21% rise in 2025.
Full Story
The Watch Register has documented a significant rise in luxury watch registrations, with 10,000 timepieces added to its records last year alone. This amounts to one new entry every hour, bringing the total number of watches logged to 114,000.
This platform is crucial for buyers and traders of pre-owned watches, enabling them to verify a watch’s unique serial number to ascertain if it has been flagged as lost or stolen.
In a noticeable trend, online checks conducted through The Watch Register’s database surged by 29% compared to the previous year. The annual total reached over 280,000 checks within the global pre-owned market. Additionally, there has been a robust increase in businesses utilizing the database for verification, with a 42% rise in sign-ups for 2025 compared to 2024.
Katya Hills, the managing director of The Watch Register, emphasised that these statistics reflect a growing commitment from the industry to combat watch-related crime. “This is evidence of the global pre-owned watch market actively using our database as a tool to fight watch crime,” she stated. Hills added that the rapid identification of many watches illustrates the effectiveness of international data sharing in mitigating the issue of stolen watches.
Rolex continues to be the most frequently targeted brand, representing 44% of watches checked in the database by both private buyers and traders. Furthermore, it accounted for 51% of the watches reported as lost or stolen this year.
The rate of successful identification of lost and stolen watches has also seen a significant boost. In 2025, a total of 1,375 watches were identified as lost or stolen, marking a 21% increase from the 1,136 identified in the previous year.
These findings underscore the widespread issue of luxury watch theft and highlight the growing dependence on data-driven verification methods within the secondary market.
