The Pocket Watch Is Back White Tie Is Optional

Perpetually, Yours (Rolex 1960)

For years, the luxury watch industry chased extremes. Watches became larger, then smaller. Cases turned carbon fiber, ceramic, forged titanium, meteorite. Brands built pieces capable of surviving deep-sea trenches, race circuits and environments no private equity executive in loafers will ever experience outside an airport lounge.

And now? The newest fascination may be something your great-grandfather carried while yelling at train schedules:

The pocket watch.

The AP 150 Heritage Complication

Yes. The little metal biscuit attached to a chain. Historically favored by railroad conductors, Victorian bankers, and men named Theodore who believed dinner required a waistcoat. Pocket watches are quietly creeping back into conversations among collectors and maisons. Not as practical objects, but as statements… and we know luxury loves a statement.

What’s especially amusing is that thousands of these things already exist. They are sitting in attic drawers, cedar chests, forgotten desk compartments or tangled beside war medals and cufflinks in boxes labeled Grandpa’s Things. Entire generations inherited pocket watches, nodded respectfully, then buried them for forty years beneath old tax returns and Christmas decorations.

The watch industry may be the only world capable of rediscovering objects already hiding upstairs in your own home and presenting them as the next major movement.

The Royal Pop Swatch/AP Colab

In 2026, brands have leaned in hard. Audemars Piguet shocked collectors by collaborating with Swatch on the wildly discussed Royal Pop collection of eight colorful mechanical pocket watches that generated lines outside stores days before launch. Some enthusiasts camped out for a $400 pocket watch from a brand famous for making people wait years for a Royal Oak. Many don’t understand this behavior. Me too.

Meanwhile, houses like Patek Philippe continue producing elaborate one-off pocket watches through Rare Handcrafts collections, while newer releases from brands including Louis Vuitton and experimental pieces from Hublot suggest pocket watches are shifting from museum objects to conversation starters.

Auction houses noticed too.

Currently Available In Sotheby's Catalogue

For years, a pocket watch at auction often meant inheritance liquidation: old railroad watches, yellowed receipts, family disputes. Now, major sales from Phillips Watches, Sotheby’s Watches and Christie’s Watches increasingly feature exceptional pocket watches alongside perpetual calendars and trophy Daytona’s. Brass engraved discs from Rolex alongside rare complication pocket watches from Patek Philippe regularly command six and seven figures, proving collectors will absolutely pay enormous sums for a watch requiring two hands and a vest.

Real distinction requires reaching into your jacket, producing a hinged gold disc and checking the time as though you’re about to board the Orient Express.

The appeal makes strange sense. Luxury consumers increasingly want things that feel slower, rarer and detached from convenience. Vinyl returned. Fountain pens returned. Handwritten notes returned. Pocket watches fit perfectly into this movement of deliberate inconvenience disguised as sophistication.

Collectors adore anything requiring ritual. The watch world has never met an unnecessary complication it didn’t celebrate. Moon phases? Essential. Minute repeaters? Naturally. Chronographs? A must have. And now, a chain anchored to a vest or buttonhole connected to a hunk of gold, brass, vermeil and silver that makes you take the time to tell the time.

Enjoy