By
Bloomberg
Published
May 18, 2026
After the frenzy over the weekend to buy timepieces from the new Audemars Piguet-Swatch collaboration, many who succeeded in laying their hands on the Royal Pop pocket watches wasted no time to flip the sought-after product.
Listings on platforms such as France’s Le Bon Coin showed the Royal Pop reselling for €1,500 ($1,745.) That’s about four times what the €385 the cheapest model costs in France. On Switzerland’s Ricardo website, a model of the watch was offered for 2,200 Swiss Francs ($2,800.)
The pocket watch, the result of a rare collaboration between mass manufacturer Swatch Group AG and Audemars Piguet, the maker of the exclusive Royal Oak, went on sale on May 16. The announcement generated so much interest that some Swatch stores across the world had to shut down for crowd-safety concerns and sometimes couldn’t even open. The product was only available for purchase in stores.
“Looking at this weekend’s footage and the chaos that sometimes ensued, it seems the people queuing were clearly only interested in an immediate resale, with no interest in the product, which is quite sad,” Pierre-Olivier Essig, head of research at AIR Capital told Bloomberg. “If Swatch was looking for a shock buzz, it was a hit!” Essig has a speculative buy on the stock.
Shares of Swatch fell as much as 2.76% in Zurich trading early Monday, reducing this year’s gains to about 17%.
Swatch reminded customers on its Instagram account on Saturday that the Royal Pop collection would remain available for several months and that queues of more than 50 people couldn’t be accepted in some countries, with sales needing to be paused. The warning prompted angry comments from high-profile watch influencers such as Chamath Gamage, with about 140,000 followers on that social media platform.
Gamage urged the watch group to fix its approach and emulate Apple Inc., which initially faced similar lines with its Iphone launches. The Californian company eventually moved toward virtual queues and reservations, Gamage added, telling Swatch: “You know exactly how many units each boutique is holding, so why let the lines keep building? Why let people wait for hours when the allocation is already clear?” Gamage wrote. “A product like this should feel fun, accessible and exciting. Not stressful,” he added in his post.
Air Capital’s Essig said he doesn’t see the need for Audemars Piguet to engage in this collaboration since the exclusive watchmaker enjoys a strong reputation that’s built on scarcity, questioning the strategy of CEO Ilaria Resta, who took over about two and a half years ago.
Audemars Piguet sold about 50,000 watches last year with a production capacity of an extra 20,000, according to a joint report by Morgan Stanley and LuxeConsult. That compares to about 4.4 million for the Swatch brand, the report said. Audemars Piguet and Swatch weren’t immediately available for comment.
“The AP x Swatch launch turned to an image disaster with the catastrophic logistics around the drop,” said Oliver Mueller at LuxeConsult. “I still think it’s a good idea and concept. But the execution needs to be at the level of the concept.”
