The retail price of the Hermès Arceau Samarcande watch. With a diamond-encrusted, horsehead-shaped cutout revealing the gears beneath, it’s a prime example of the luxury brand's attempt to grab market share in the timepiece sector by leaning into playfulness.

The strategy is, ironically enough, a way to make up for lost time. Hermès only started making its own watches in the late 1970s—roughly 140 years after the company’s founding, and decades after luxury timepiece leaders like Patek Philippe, Rolex, and Audemars Piguet had established themselves at the category’s pinnacle.

Hermès’s gamble has been to combine the top-flight craftsmanship of its other departments—experts gush over the quality of the brand’s leather watch straps—with whimsical designs that counterprogram its longer-standing rivals. Aside from the Arceau Samarcande, other knowingly over-the-top Hermès productions include the Arceau Rocabar de Rire, which features a horse rendered in wood marquetry that sticks its tongue out at the press of a dedicated button, and the Arceau Les Folies du Ciel, which is centered around a harlequin-colored, bird-shaped hot air balloon with tiny figures manning telescopes and flying flags.

Delightful models like these haven’t yet caught fire on the resale market. The highest price at auction for an aesthetically similar—by this writer’s judgment, at least—Hermès watch was $37,270 (with fees) at Phillips Hong Kong in May 2023, according to market analytics firm ARTDAI. That was well over the high estimate of around $19,000, but miles away from the category’s price summit. Still, the Wall Street Journal reported that Hermès posted double-digit YOY increases in its watch sales from 2021-23, before the tide turned in 2024-25 as the larger luxury market struggled. The jury is still out on whether playfulness can make Hermès a major player in the timepiece game. Only time will tell.

—Tim Schneider / The Gray Market

Irina R. ASKed: Which is the more exciting and valued auction consignment: a modern masterpiece held privately by the artist’s family for nearly 100 years, or a comparable work with a prominent public history of exhibitions, sales, and mentions in literature?

Josh Baer for NoReserve: My personal thought as an advisor is that the latter is better. Why, you might ask? Sometimes, artists keep works because they are different or personal favorites; other times, these works are kept just because they went unsold. This varies artist by artist—think of the Picasso family, who kept great things. On the other hand, collectors who were known to only buy the best of the best—like, say, the Rockefellers—will add resale value.

That said, if a work has changed hands 10 times, that means it's had nine owners who were willing to sell. Examples like these won’t carry the same cache as pieces owned by Agnes Gund or S.I. Newhouse, to name a few high-profile buyers whose collections have hit the block recently.

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