Selling This Luxury Watch From 1972 Could Earn You A Ton Of Money In 2025

The year was 1972, and Swiss watchmaker Audemars Piguet was in a bind. Other watch companies were mass-producing watches, so Audemars Piguet, or AP for short, had to up its game. Its solution, according to the luxury product magazine Robb Report, was to produce a sports watch that soon became AP's most popular product. Called the Royal Oak Ref. 5402ST, its prices today can even surpass the 2025 value of a vintage Rolex Double Red Sea-Dweller from the late 1960s, which can fetch around $75,000. As of June 2024, per Robb Report, an original 1972 Royal Oak was worth anywhere from $100,000 to $200,000.

But that is not the end of the story. Audemars Piguet continued creating new lines of Royal Oak watches, but opted to return to the near original design with the release of the 39 millimeter "Jumbo" Ultra Thin Automatic Royal Oak Ref. 15202ST in the 2010s. In March 2025, this tribute to the original 1972 line was listed as among the five watches with the biggest resale value by the luxury consignment company TheRealReal. Indeed, any version of the Royal Oak can fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars on the secondhand market.

Founded in Le Brassus in 1875, Audemars Piguet took the idea of quality over quantity very seriously. Between 1930 and 1962, for example, AP made just 307 watches, according to Robb Report. This is why AP watches tend to be worth a lot of money: they are well-made and, like most valuable coins, very rare. Case in point: Paris-based auction house Ader sold one of eight circa 1942 pre-model 1530 watches ever made for €166,400 (about $194,000).

The Royal Oak came about as AP adapted to changes in the industry. Patek Philippe, AP's main competitor, increased production from 1,000 to 10,000 watches per year, per Robb Report. In 1971, AP formed an alliance with Swiss watch giant SSIH, which expanded AP's market universe to 160 agents and 15,000 retailers, according to Monochrome. The catch: SSIH wanted AP to produce a tough, luxurious steel self-winding sports watch.

In response, AP hired famed watch designer Gérald Genta to create, as Genta recalled, "a steel sports watch that has never been done before" by the next morning, as told in AP's official historical webpage, AP Chronicles. So, Genta sketched a design for the Royal Oak sports watch with an octagonal bezel and eight hexagonal exposed screws, which was inspired by a diver's helmet.

At 39 millimeters in diameter, the AP Royal Oak 5402ST was larger than most wristwatches on the market, which earned it the nickname "Jumbo." Yet its steel metal casing was thin, thanks to a compact mechanical movement mechanism co-developed by AP: the Calibre 2121. It had a date mechanism, was waterproof, and had an intricate watch band design. In its first year, just 1,000 steel Royal Oaks were made, per Monochrome Watches. In all, just slightly more than 6,000 were made in 5402ST's run through the 1970s.

In the years that followed, AP cranked out new Royal Oak designs, but then revived most of the original design elements when it released the 15202ST under its Ultra-Thin Jumbo moniker in 2012, in time for the Royal Oak's 40th anniversary. According to the official Audemars Piguet website, the 15202ST is 8 millimeters thick and water-resistant to 50 meters, sporting a blue dial with a date function and equipped with the Calibre 2121 movement.

After AP announced it would discontinue the 15202ST in 2022 on the watch line's 50th anniversary, its prices spiked to as much as $300,000, per Robb Report. As of August 2025, the 15202ST, which originally retailed at $20,900, had a typical price of just over $53,000, per WatchCharts.com. Meanwhile, the latest version of the Royal Oak, Ref. 16202ST, costs around $33,000.