The $400 AP x Swatch Watch Collection Already Reselling for $8,000+, and Why Collectors Are Furious
Someone bought the entire AP x Swatch Royal Pop collection on eBay for $8,000 and is listings on StockX seller asking for $21,000.
The watches retail for around $400 and people are paying more than 4 times that. The whole collection sold for $8000+. The May 16 turned into the kind of event that closed down streets, shut down stores in seven UK cities, and makes a famous rapper/streamer threaten to sell his $200,000 Audemars Piguet on a livestream.
However, half of the watch world is celebrating while the other half is angry enough to dump their collections.
Why it broke the internet on launch day
source: https://www.instagram.com/p/DYZGw08DWSG/?hl=en
People camped outside Swatch boutiques in New York for a full week.
Stores in London, Birmingham, Cardiff, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield closed for safety reasons after crowds got too large. The Dubai Mall launch event was cancelled outright. In Paris, photos circulated of fans pressed against the glass of a shuttered boutique while watches sat displayed inside.
Within hours of launch, resale prices on StockX, eBay, and Carousell exploded. UAE resellers listed pieces between $5,400 and $6,800. UK resale hit £16,000 for sought-after colorways. The average StockX resale settled around $905 for watches and $245 for just the lanyards.
Swatch staff in many stores limited queues to 50 people regardless of how long people had waited. Stock counts were never disclosed. Most people in line went home with nothing.
The DDG meltdown that lit the fuse
Rapper DDG went on a livestream and said, quote, “Just seeing this makes me want to sell my AP.” clip source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Yt-Jlr1ab4
He had paid around $200,000 for a discontinued Royal Oak. His complaint, in his words: “You telling me I could have waited until 2026 and spent $300 and got the same effect?”
He later compared it to Ferrari collaborating with Honda to make a $30,000 “Ferrari Civic.” Whether you agree with him or not, that clip is what pushed the Royal Pop out of watch Twitter and into general pop culture in about 48 hours.
Why serious collectors are split
Eugene Tutunikov, CEO of SwissWatchExpo, called the Royal Pop a “damaging misstep” and said he fully expects a wave of collectors calling to sell their Royal Oak collections. His company is buying hundreds of watches a week and is ready for the dump.
However, data on Watch Charts hasn’t shown any major dips as of May 17, 2026:
Hannah Luo, watch collector states: “this collaboration is going to be a fad.. When the general public is sick of this fad, and the plastic Royal Pop is no longer Royal, it turns into Royal Poop.”
Tim Stracke, on the other hand, argues the Royal Pop does not actually compete with a Royal Oak because it is “a wearable trinket,” not a wristwatch. Linden Lazarus of WatchCheck thinks short-term resale on real APs takes a small hit, but the brand wins long-term because younger and more diverse collectors now have a doorway in.
Did Audemars Piguet open the gates to a wider audience, or did it cheapen a brand that built its identity on being unreachable?
What the AP x Swatch watch is actually worth right now
If you are thinking about buying one on the secondary market, slow down.
Swatch has confirmed the Royal Pop is not a limited edition. That means stock will keep coming. Most collectors expect resale prices to slide significantly over the next few months, the way MoonSwatch prices did after the initial frenzy.
If you are thinking about selling a Royal Pop you managed to grab at retail, the window is now. Hype-driven resale peaks tend to be sharp and short. The smartest sellers on launch weekend already listed their pieces within 48 hours of getting them.
If you own a real Royal Oak and you are wondering whether to sell, the honest answer is that the data does not exist yet. Resale on existing Royal Oaks has not crashed. Watch dealers report curiosity and chatter, not a mass exodus. Wait 90 days before making a permanent decision based on a viral weekend.
Should you actually want one
The Royal Pop is a pocket watch. You wear it on a lanyard. If you live in jeans and t-shirts and want a watch on your wrist, this is not that. If you like the idea of a small object that doubles as jewelry, conversation piece, and a real mechanical movement that you wind yourself, it earns its price at retail.
At $400 retail, it is one of the more interesting Swiss-made mechanical objects you can buy. At $1,400 – $3,400 (depending on style) on the resale market, it is an emotional purchase, not a value one.
What the Royal Pop actually is
The Royal Pop is a collection of eight bioceramic pocket watches that come on a calfskin lanyard, designed to be worn around your neck, clipped to a bag, or hung off a belt loop. It is the first time in 54 years that Audemars Piguet has let the Royal Oak design language leave its own factory.
The watches keep the famous octagonal bezel, the eight hexagonal screws, and the Petite Tapisserie dial pattern. They run on a brand new hand-wound version of Swatch’s SISTEM51 movement with over 90 hours of power reserve and 15 active patents. Colors range from all-black “Ocho Negro” to a hot pink and yellow combo called “Otg Roz.”
Prices started around $400 in the US and £335 in the UK. They are not officially limited edition, which is part of why the resale chaos feels so absurd.
How to actually get one without paying resale
Swatch is restocking participating boutiques. Online sales were not part of launch and are not confirmed yet. The US currently has 21 participating boutiques across 20 cities, including two in New York, plus Miami Beach, Las Vegas, Dallas and Houston.
The play, if you want one at retail, is to call your nearest participating Swatch boutique on a weekday morning two to three weeks after launch and ask when their next allocation lands. The frenzy stores are running on now will pass. The watch will not.
Want to see standout watches? Check out our collection of watches at TheWatchConnect.com.