Are Tiffany Blue Watches the new thing or just a fad?

This week I woke up to an Instagram post showing me a Patek Philippe 5711 Nautilus, limited edition with a Tiffany stamped dial that also had the exact shade of Tiffany’s blue color as the background of the dial. It is a commemorative watch developed by Patek for Tiffany, to symbolize the 170 years that the two companies have been partnered in selling watches. Only 170 lucky people will get one of these watches. I will not be one of them, not because I don’t want one, but because I am “not on the list” as one would say.

I am not mad, I am just disappointed that I am not on that list. I was however pretty lucky and did get the extremely popular Turquoise Blue Rolex Oyster-Perpetual in 41mm at MSRP just days after it was released. A watch that has blown up the watch world and is selling for 3.5X to 4X its MSRP. Do not ask, I am not selling it, but it makes me wonder if everyone is going to start jumping on this powder blue / turquoise blue bandwagon?

The first time I saw this color used, and really take off, was with the Halios Seaforth. Back in 2017 it started showing up on Halios’ Instagram and I was smitten with it. I purchased the watch in a preorder and could not wait for it to come to my home. The watch became incredibly popular and today that watch on the second hand market goes for 2X (sometimes more) than what it went for originally! I have been lucky enough to know Jason at Halios, and frankly I am not sure he had any plan that the Seaforth in general would do so well, but that Tiffany colored blue had to help him.

Image from watchuseek.com

You fast forward to today and many watch brands are starting to use this unique coloring on their dials. For example Oris did a bronze watch with a very light blue, Astor and Banks did a gorgeous watch known as the Fortitude in a 38.5 mm case with a semi-blue (almost towards Vespa Green) dial. Doxa released a gorgeous diver with a light powder blue about a year ago and it is spectacular - we even did an article on this topic a few months ago. What is quite surprising to me is that as I check around, I see that all of these watches are sold out. I cannot purchase them from the seller or manufacturer’s website. This tells me a lot about this colored dial.

Picture from chrono24.com seller

So, is this a fad or is this a thing going forward? My answer is that it is a thing. Here is why: Rolex already did it in 1978 and sometimes cool stuff takes a while to catch on. In the late 1970’s Rolex released a powdery turquoise dial on a full gold Rolex President. At the time it did not do very well, however today they are extremely sought after Rolex watches that sell for up to $60,000.00. Just to give another watch that was actually shunned when it came out was the Rolex Daytona. That is right, probably the hottest watch to ever be made by a watch brand in the world, used to sit in the jeweler’s case and get sold at a discounted price. Now, it has a ten year wait list and sells for multiples of its MSRP. 

Here is the pattern that we see repeated many times: If Rolex does it at some point in history, it goes from fad to uber popular at some point in the future. Maybe it is overnight, maybe it is measured in decades but if they do it - expect it to become a staple in many watch brands. So, expect that you are going to keep seeing watches with this type of blue to start popping up as a new colorway that will continue on.

Header image from Millenary Watches