What is the best value watch in terms of gold content at retail price?
I was looking at a Tudor Black Bay 58 18k, which retails for $36.5k. Supposedly Tudor claimed in some materials when it launched that it contained 193g of 18k gold. The price of gold is about $135/g right now so that would mean the melt value is about $19.5k which gives a premium of about 1.86x
Doing the same calculation for various Rolex models like the Sub, GMT, and Day Date with weight estimates I can find online gives something more like 2.1x. That makes sense to me given that those have sort of similar construction but with the higher Rolex price.
Other “solid gold” watches like PP and AP and VC all have higher premiums on the “watch” so I can’t think of anything else that may even compete with the Tudor in terms of value.
I’m interested to hear others thoughts.
Posted Dec 8, 2025, 3:30 AM UTC