Outside In | How to keep your luxury watch safe with ‘Rolex Rippers’ rife
- The rise of such crimes, sometimes violent, has been made easier by social media and cryptocurrency. Best to keep your luxury watch in a safe, or better still, not have one at all
Those in Hong Kong who share a passion for luxury watches, heed this warning. In response to a feature on watch theft on Hodinkee, a US watch website, a reader left this comment: “Take them out of your safe before bed, admire them for a few moments, then put them back in the safe. In the morning, put on your Seiko.”
It took me back to a time when strolling down Temple Street meant being confronted at every corner by vendors with arms full of fake Rolexes, Cartiers and Patek Philippes. When challenged that these were fakes, the enthusiastic vendors would invariably reply: “Yes, but real Seiko inside.”
There has been a post-pandemic surge in the theft of luxury watches, according to The Watch Register, the world’s leading database for lost and stolen watches, noting that “watch crime has gone from a niche problem to front-page news”. Owners, said The Watch Register’s managing director Katya Hills, have become “afraid to wear their timepieces in public”.
Hong Kong, as a leading watch-trading centre and a home to thousands of wealthy collectors of luxury timepieces, has been in the thick of this. There are few other places where you would see shops selling safes in shopping malls.
According to Hong Kong police data, robberies in general jumped by 26 per cent last year, with burglaries up 52.8 per cent to 1,354, and snatchings up 26.6 per cent to 81. Seven watch shops and goldsmiths were robbed, up from three in 2022.
Celebrities worldwide have had their watches stolen, sometimes violently. In recent years, three of the world’s leading Formula One racing drivers – Carlos Sainz, Charles Leclerc and Lando Norris – have had their Richard Mille watches, worth anywhere from US$180,000 to over US$300,000, snatched in public, and countless football celebrities have suffered similar indignities. Cyclist Mark Cavendish and boxer Amir Khan have been robbed of their luxury watches at knife or gunpoint.
