Watch collectors are very good at changing their minds.
A new watch launches and suddenly it’s too big, too expensive, too strange or simply not what the brand should be making.
Then ten years pass.
People start looking again. The thing everyone complained about becomes “underrated”.
Then “a future classic”.
Before long, collectors are desperately trying to find one.
Of course, not every watch on this list was literally hated by everyone. Some were criticised, some struggled commercially and others simply failed to attract the attention they receive today.
But hindsight can do funny things to watches.
Here are five that prove it.
1. Rolex ‘Paul Newman’ Daytona
The watch nobody wanted to buy
This might be the greatest example of all.
Today, vintage Rolex Daytonas with the so-called Paul Newman exotic dial sit among the most famous collector watches in the world.
Originally?
Dealers struggled to sell them.
The exotic-dial Daytonas of the 1960s and ’70s were considerably less desirable than Rolex models such as the Submariner and Datejust, and contemporary accounts describe dealers discounting examples simply to get them out of the shop.
It wasn’t until collectors began rediscovering vintage Daytonas during the 1980s and ’90s that attitudes really started changing.
The irony is wonderful.
One of the things that makes the Paul Newman Daytona so desirable today is partly a consequence of nobody wanting it in the first place.
Poor demand meant relatively few exotic dials were produced. Decades later, that scarcity became part of their appeal.
If only somebody had told us to buy the unwanted ones…
2. Audemars Piguet Royal Oak
“You want how much for a steel watch?”
Imagine seeing the Royal Oak for the first time in 1972.
It’s made from stainless steel. The screws are visible. The bracelet is integrated into the case. It’s enormous by contemporary standards.
And Audemars Piguet wants CHF 3,300 (approximately 3000 GBP) for it.
According to AP’s own historical archive, the launch caused a sensation but also attracted considerable criticism and scepticism. The price was particularly shocking because the Royal Oak could cost as much as, or more than, contemporary gold watches.
It broke practically every rule luxury watchmaking was supposed to follow.
That’s exactly what made it important.
The Royal Oak helped establish an entirely different idea of what a luxury sports watch could be, and the combination of Gérald Genta’s design, steel construction and integrated bracelet that once looked so unconventional is now one of the most recognisable formulas in watchmaking.
Sometimes being wrong for the time is exactly what makes a watch right later on.
3. Tudor North Flag
The Tudor people didn’t quite know what to do with
The North Flag is a more recent example, and I think it’s one of the most interesting.
Launched in 2015, it was hugely significant for Tudor because it introduced the MT5621, Tudor’s first in-house movement.
But there was a problem.
While the Black Bay looked backwards towards Tudor’s history, the North Flag looked firmly forwards. Its angular case, integrated bracelet and flashes of yellow felt much more modern than the vintage-inspired Tudors people were falling in love with.
It never really caught on in the same way as the Black Bay or Pelagos, and after years without meaningful updates Tudor quietly discontinued it.
And then something predictable happened.
People started missing it.
Today, the North Flag has developed something of a cult following among enthusiasts who appreciate precisely what made it unusual in the first place.
Sometimes a watch has to disappear before people realise what they liked about it.
4. Rolex Daytona
Yes, the Daytona again
There’s a reason I’ve separated this from the Paul Newman.
Because it wasn’t only the exotic-dial version that struggled.
For much of the manual-wind Daytona’s early life, Rolex’s chronograph simply wasn’t the superstar it is today. By the quartz era, the inconvenience of manually winding a mechanical chronograph didn’t exactly help, and older Daytonas could be slow sellers offered at substantial discounts.
That’s almost impossible to imagine now.
Say “Rolex Daytona” today and you immediately think of one of Rolex’s defining models.
But its journey wasn’t inevitable.
The Daytona had to become an icon.
It wasn’t simply born one.
5. Cartier Crash
The watch that still looks wrong… brilliantly so
I’ll finish with something slightly different.
The Cartier Crash wasn’t a commercial failure in the same sense as the early Daytona, and I wouldn’t claim people universally hated it.
But when it appeared from Cartier London in 1967, it was radical.
The warped case, distorted Roman numerals and complete lack of symmetry looked unlike the restrained watches surrounding it. Sotheby’s describes it as a deliberate experiment in shape that represented a dramatic departure from conventional watch design.
Nearly sixty years later, that’s precisely why collectors love it.
Original London examples are exceptionally rare, and the Crash has developed from an experimental oddity into one of Cartier’s most sought-after designs.
The Crash didn’t become less weird.
Collectors simply learned to appreciate the weirdness.
So are watch collectors terrible at predicting future classics?
Maybe.
But I think there’s something else going on.
Watches don’t exist in isolation. What looks enormous in 1972 can look perfectly normal decades later.
What seems outdated during the quartz revolution can become wonderfully mechanical once technology moves on.
And a design that looks bizarre when everyone else is playing it safe can eventually become desirable precisely because nobody else made anything like it.
Taste changes.
Context changes.
And collectors change too.
That’s why I’d be very careful about immediately dismissing a watch simply because it doesn’t make sense today.
Does unpopular mean valuable?
Absolutely not.
For every watch that was overlooked and later became desirable, there are plenty that disappeared because people genuinely didn’t want them, and still don’t.
That’s an important distinction.
Being unpopular doesn’t automatically make something a future classic.
And buying a watch purely because you think everyone else will eventually change their mind is probably missing the point.
I’d rather buy the strange watch because I like it.
If everyone else eventually catches up, that’s just a bonus.
Which modern watch will collectors change their minds about next?
That’s the fun question.
There’s probably a watch sitting in a boutique right now that collectors are criticising for being too strange, too expensive or completely wrong for the brand.
In twenty years, we might all be wondering why we didn’t buy one.
Or it might still be sitting there.
That’s what makes collecting interesting.
At The Watch Experts, the pre-owned market gives you the chance to explore watches from every stage of that journey.
Whether its current favourites, discontinued models and references that deserve another look.
Browse our latest pre-owned luxury watches and see if there’s something everyone else has overlooked.