Timepieces in a combination of gold and steel, first popular during the 1970s and ’80s, are helping brands maintain revenues even as sales decline.
When a Rolex diving watch goes solid gold, you know the tide has turned.
At Watches & Wonders Geneva in April, Rolex unveiled a 44-millimeter Oyster Perpetual Deepsea diver model in solid 18-karat yellow gold. It weighed 320 grams (11.3 ounces) — roughly the equivalent of two billiard balls on the wrist.
While that Godzilla of all divers has yet to become a trendsetter, it has been a bellwether of sorts for the return of gold, as more brands seek to raise prices by offering what are called bimetal watches, a combination of gold and steel.
“All-gold watches can be a difficult proposition,” Carlos Rosillo, the co-founder and chief executive of Bell & Ross, said. “Their prices can be prohibitively high and, even then, not everyone likes to wear a visible, all-gold watch.”
After years of popularity, Swiss exports of stainless steel watches have been declining — down 15 percent year-over-year in the first half of 2024, according to figures from the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry.
And even though the price of gold is at an all-time high — $2,501 per ounce in August, up from $1,824 in January 2023 — exports of watches in bimetal (up 2.7 percent in July, compared with July 2023) and precious metals (up 12.6 percent in July, compared with July 2023) have increased. Philippe Pegoraro, the head of the watch federation’s economic and statistical department, said that more than 90 percent of the watches in the precious-metals category were gold.
Bimetal — or two-tone, as it often is called — refers to a watch case, crown and bezel of two metals, typically yellow or rose gold with steel, usually on a steel bracelet with center gold links. The two-metal combination also could be gold and titanium or, in a rare combination, white and yellow gold.
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