The Anti–Year-End Wrap-Up: A 2025 Pulse Check on the Watch Industry

Last year I wrote an orthodox year-end roundup, a look back at everything that transpired in the watch world, filled with clichés and familiar predictions about where things might go next. It was one of hundreds written by people like me in watch media, small personal manifestos where we step onto a soapbox, briefly convinced that the world needs our opinion.

That is why I hesitated to do it again this year. The watch world does not need another wrap-up or another set of half-hearted forecasts. What it needs is a pulse check. Not a tally of releases, but a clearer sense of what actually mattered, what conversations endured, and whether there was finally some deeper reflection running through the noise.

2025: Releases, Conversations, and Cultural Shifts

It was not for lack of material. By any objective measure, this was an extraordinary year in watches. We saw meaningful technical developments, from new escapements at Breguet and Rolex to the Vacheron Constantin Solaria Grand Comp staking its claim as the most complicated wristwatch ever made.

There were real conversations about finishing, about what “in-house” actually means, about internal angles and the machines now capable of executing them. We saw releases that mattered: a white-dial Tudor Black Bay Pro, a burgundy Black Bay 58, Blancpain finally delivering a 38mm Fifty Fathoms, Nomos commanding attention at Watches and Wonders with a new world time, Zenith reviving the caliber 135 with its GFJ, and IWC quietly releasing an under-the-radar Ingenieur Perpetual.

Here at The 1916 Company, we published deep historical dives on ultra-thin watchmaking and forgotten architects of time, while revisiting references like the Omega Equinoxe, The Omega Seamaster 120 Recife, the Minerva Pythagore, and the Patek Philippe ref. 3579. Jack explored every one of the 250th anniversary Breguets, examined the return of the Louis Vuitton Monterey, explained the art of movement design, and debunked some of the most persistent watch myths along the way.

The 2025 auction season was arguably the strongest ever, with standouts such as the Francis Ford Coppola F.P. Journe and the steel Patek Philippe ref 1518 commanding top prizes. Phillips alone realized over $290 million in 2025, surpassing its previous record of $227 million from 2022 at the height of the post-COVID watch boom. The Journe market surged. Rolex CPO found its footing.

We also saw attention begin to migrate from traditional watch media to independent journalists, particularly those using Substack as a platform for long-form, thoughtful coverage. Tony Traina’s Unpolished set the pace, while King Flum’s ScrewDownCrown and Chris Hall’s The Fourth Wheel followed closely, reinforcing a broader shift toward independent voices.

And yet, even with all of that, even knowing I have missed plenty, I still could not bring myself to write a neat recap capped with tidy predictions about moonphases, pastel dials, or the continued use of stone. Not because the year lacked clarity, but because reducing it to forecasts felt like the wrong conclusion to draw from everything that actually happened.

A Matter Of Perspective

To borrow from one of my favorite historians, Howard Zinn, “we live in topsy-turvy times.” As much as I love this community and the work we do, there are moments when discussing watches purely for our own interests feels insufficient. Hollow, perhaps. I am still searching for the right word.

That sense of unease has a way of forcing perspective. For me, it coincided with a far more personal shift. This year, I became a father. That single fact has permanently altered how I think about time, about work, and about what deserves my attention. And it is here, rather than in another list of highlights, that this reflection needs to be grounded. If you came looking for a conventional year-end meditation on the watch world, I apologize. What follows is less a recap and more a plea.

I have been thinking deeply about what this all means. What this community means. What it means to write about watches, these unnecessary objects, depending on who you ask, that nonetheless absorb our passion, our curiosity, and our hard-earned money.

The mainstream acceptance of watches is perhaps best illustrated by Wei Koh’s Man of the Hour series on Discovery, with some outlets going so far as to call him the Anthony Bourdain of the watch world. I love Wei, but I am not ready to give him that title, at least not yet.

Looking Forward

So as we enter 2026, with the watch world riding high on the taste of champagne fueled horological hedonism still fresh from events like Rolliefest, we look toward what comes next. With alarm bells sounding in every Morgan Stanley report, tariffs now in the rearview, and others claiming there are simply too many new brands, making a prediction feels about as useful as chasing the wind.

What I do know is this. We will continue our newsletters. We will continue our Watch of the Week series. We will continue to write about innovation and the people who make this collecting world special. But it feels as though we may finally be reaching an inflection point, one where substance begins to outweigh panache and flash. The Instagram and TikTok shillers are fading. My feed is no longer flooded with 47th Street flippers melting gold Cartiers for scrap. Scholarship, not spectacle, is where I see this community heading.

Learning about figures like Lépine, or the role Voltaire and his Ferney manufacture played in shaping watchmaking, feels far more important than chasing the next hyped release. That, to me, is the trajectory worth following.

A Moment of Reflection

When I taught, I had a saying: the pendulum always swings back. We would embrace new methods, reverse lesson planning, and every piece of technology available to us. But eventually, nothing beat a well-constructed five-paragraph essay. A real dive into a thesaurus, digital or print. And, most importantly, actual human thought.

Becoming a father this year clarified something I had been circling for a long time. Legacy is not about what we accumulate, but what we choose to preserve and pass on.

When my son is old enough to ask what I did with my time, I hope the answer is not simply that I covered releases or tracked market cycles, but that I helped document a small, meaningful corner of human culture with care.

Watches are easy to dismiss as luxury objects, but they are also artifacts. They sit at the intersection of science, craft, labor, commerce, exploration, and belief. They tell us how societies measured the world, organized work, navigated oceans, coordinated armies, worshipped, traded, and remembered. If we fail to record that history with rigor and curiosity in mainstream media, it becomes flattened into marketing language and resale values, stripped of context and meaning.

That, ultimately, is the responsibility I now feel most strongly. Not to predict trends or chase attention, but to act as a steward of this history while there are still people, documents, and ideas worth preserving. To leave behind an educated narrative that treats watchmaking not as hype or hobby, but as an essential thread in our shared cultural story.

If the pendulum truly is swinging back, then perhaps this is where it lands: in slower thinking, deeper research, and writing that assumes someone will one day want to understand not just what we wore on our wrists, but why it mattered. That is the work I want to do now. And it is the legacy I hope, in some small way, to leave behind.