Good morning {{first_name|Reader}},

This week I'm handing the newsletter over to Lucas, the writer behind A Little Wiser — a microlearning newsletter that delivers three sharp lessons, three times a week. Lucas put together one of the most data-driven takes on Gen Z and watch collecting I've read. If you enjoy his writing, you can subscribe to A Little Wiser here.

The conventional assumption about Gen Z and luxury goods was that a generation raised on smartphones, streaming, and fast fashion would have little patience for mechanical watches and objects with no notifications or apps. The data has dismantled that assumption comprehensively.

According to a 2024 Watchfinder & Co. survey of 2,400 Gen Z respondents aged 16 to 26, 41 percent had come into possession of a luxury watch in the previous year. Among those ready to make a purchase, the average starting price they cited was $10,870, compared to $5,325 for millennials, $5,423 for Generation X, and $2,632 for boomers.

The same group was acquiring 2.4 new watches per year alongside 1.43 pre-owned pieces, figures that would be striking for any age group but are particularly so for a generation whose oldest members are in their late twenties. A 2025 Boston Consulting Group survey found that 54 percent of Gen Z respondents had increased their luxury watch spending since 2021, and Sotheby's estimated that nearly one third of all watch buyers in 2023 were aged 30 or under.

What makes the trend more interesting than the headline numbers is the taste driving it. For the previous decade, the most coveted watches in the market were steel sports models — the Rolex Daytona, the Patek Philippe Nautilus, the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak — chunky, masculine pieces that had come to define serious collecting.

Gen Z has largely reversed that. According to the H1 2025 Chrono24 and Fratello Secondary Watch Market Report, the share of dress watch purchases among Gen Z's total transactions rose 44 percent between 2018 and 2025, compared to a 29 percent increase among other age groups, and dress watches now represent the highest share of any demographic at 12 percent of all Gen Z watch purchases. Slim, elegant pieces on leather straps — Cartier Tanks, vintage Seikos, minimalist dials in gold and silver — are now outselling sports models among younger buyers.

The appeal appears rooted in a deliberate nostalgia for objects built to last, a counterintuitive preference in a generation that grew up surrounded by disposable technology. As one vintage watch dealer put it, a mechanical watch anchors onto a time when things were collected and made to endure.

The financial ingenuity behind the spending is worth noting. Gen Z watch buyers are 21 percent more likely than previous generations to use dealer financing, and 48 percent have sold something else before buying a watch. TikTok and Instagram have played a direct role in shaping both taste and knowledge, with creators generating millions of views from live watch negotiations and deep dives into heritage brands, giving young buyers a level of market literacy that previously took years of collecting to develop.

The introduction of a 39 percent US tariff on Swiss imports in August 2025 added a new complication, pushing more buyers toward the pre-owned market where import costs do not apply. An industry that spent decades marketing itself to older men with disposable income is being reshaped by people in their twenties who grew up in a world of infinite digital content and chose to spend their money on something that needs to be wound by hand.

A big thank you to Lucas for putting this together. The data he pulled on Gen Z buying habits is some of the most interesting watch market research I've come across, and the dress watch shift in particular is something I'll be watching closely as it plays out across the secondary market.

If you want more of Lucas's writing, he publishes three sharp lessons three times a week over at A Little Wiser. It's worth five minutes of your morning. Check it out today.

If there's a topic you want me to cover, a watch you want me to look at, or a reader wrist check you want to submit, hit reply and let me know.