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Chrono24’s rising watch index hides a sharply divided quarter
Vacheron Constantin gained 6.7 per cent in Q3 while Rolex edged back, making the brands beneath the 0.7 per cent headline the real story.
Hen & Mills Editorial · 4 min read · 22 October 2026
Watch-market reports often turn one rising line into a story about everything recovering at once. Chrono24's Quarterly Dial for the third quarter of 2026, published on 20 October, gives a more useful picture. Its ChronoPulse index rose 0.7 per cent from July through September and closed at 1,471 points, but the brands inside it did not move together. Vacheron Constantin climbed 6.7 per cent in the quarter while Rolex and IWC each slipped 0.2 per cent. The useful story is the spread, not a blanket claim that every collector has become optimistic.
A positive index with very different brands beneath it
Chrono24 says the overall index recorded a fourth consecutive positive quarter and stood 7.5 per cent above its level a year earlier. Its largest quarterly gain came from Vacheron Constantin, which also led over six and twelve months; Patek Philippe held second place over those longer periods. Those figures describe transactions in a defined secondary-market index, not the price of every watch by either maker. An index can rise because a few groups pull harder than the rest, and this quarter demonstrates that plainly.
Panerai rose 4.0 per cent during the quarter after a decline in the previous one. Patek Philippe advanced 3.0 per cent, Audemars Piguet 2.0 per cent and Omega 1.7 per cent. Jaeger-LeCoultre gained 1.2 per cent and Cartier 0.7 per cent, while Rolex and IWC were each down 0.2 per cent. The differences matter more than the tidy average. Someone tracking only Rolex would have seen an almost flat quarter while the headline index was approaching its highest level in three years.
Cartier makes the shape of demand visible
The report says Cartier's brand index reached an all-time high of 1,712 points on 21 September and ended the quarter at 1,694, up 14.5 per cent over twelve months. It also says four of the ten best-performing individual watches over the year had square cases, including examples from Cartier, Jaeger-LeCoultre and TAG Heuer. That does not prove a universal shift away from round watches. It does show that design language, rather than one shared maker or movement type, links several of the examples that performed well in this particular dataset.
Chrono24 cites the Cartier 2960 as one driver, saying its value rose roughly 45 per cent over the year. A single reference moving that much deserves attention, but it should not be treated as the return available to someone buying any Cartier today. Market reports compress many condition grades, sale dates and model references into a few useful lines. The right use of the figure is to notice where the index's momentum may be concentrated, then examine the specific reference before drawing a buying conclusion.
Vacheron Constantin's gain is notable for a different reason. Chrono24 reports 6.7 per cent in the quarter, 8.2 per cent over six months and 17.7 per cent over a year, with the brand index ending September at 1,670 points. Patek Philippe closed at 2,086 points and was up 17.0 per cent over twelve months. The index point levels are not prices in francs, dollars or euros, and comparing 2,086 with 1,670 does not mean one maker's watches cost that much more. They are scaled series whose changes convey movement over time.
What the index can and cannot tell us
Chrono24 says ChronoPulse covers 13 major luxury watch brands and more than 140 model references, using real transactions on its global marketplace. It converts those transactions into euros at the exchange rate prevailing when each trade occurred. The methodology also warns that lower transaction volumes can produce larger short-term fluctuations for some brands. Those limits are part of the story, especially when a quarterly move is less than one per cent. A small index rise is evidence of the tracked market's direction, not a guarantee about the resale value of a particular watch in Melbourne.
The market figure also measures transactions, not new-watch retail sales. It cannot by itself tell us whether a brand sold more watches through boutiques, whether a maker raised its list prices, or how much an individual dealer's stock is worth. The report's phrasing about a highest level in three years is therefore best read within its own index. It is a valuable thermometer with a defined field of view. Asking it to stand in for the entire industry would make the result less useful, not more.
For collectors, the practical consequence of the third-quarter data is to abandon the idea of a single recovery trade. Rolex's near-flat quarter sits beside Vacheron Constantin's stronger one; Cartier's longer-term rise sits beside a report that says Hublot was the only tracked brand to decline over twelve months. There is still uncertainty in each model's path, but the variation is a better starting point for questions than the overall line alone. It encourages looking at specific references and the conditions under which they trade.
Chrono24 Q3 2026 report scope and availability
Chrono24 published The Quarterly Dial for Q3 2026 on 20 October on its corporate press site. The report is available to read online and has no purchase price stated. Its figures cover the July to September quarter, with longer six- and twelve-month comparisons, across the defined ChronoPulse secondary-market sample. The accompanying graphic here uses only the quarterly brand changes given in that first-party report.
An index up for four quarters sounds like a decisive turn. The more useful conclusion from this release is narrower: demand is improving unevenly across the brands Chrono24 tracks, and the differences are large enough that a single headline number should never be the end of a watch-buying conversation.
