Rolex in Hong Kong amid COVID

[Rolexia88]

My quest to try and find a place to compare a rhodium YM, blue-face YM, BLNR oyster, Pepsi jubilee and 12x sub all in one place continues. This is so I can work out which i want to buy.

I'm in Hong Kong where COVID has meant no tourists whatsoever since April 2020. And the year before that the protests were damaging.

Today I went to the second hand watch shops area around Kimberly Plaza and Nathan Road and was shocked. I estimate 8 in 10 watch shops have closed their doors. All stock is gone and the empty display cases and chairs remain; abandoned. The remaining stores still keep their stubbornly high prices but can be negotiated down. It is a sorry sight for a once thriving area.

I popped my head into 5 Rolex ADs and asked just for the blue face YM and all said no but tried to sell me a yellow gold YMII. At the last one, frustrated by having to work hard to spend US$12,000, I asked what the point was with no stock and no customers. A wry smile and a door held open for me to leave.

Elsewhere Nathan Road is in trouble. Half the stores are gone, lots of boarded up shopfronts. This is uglier than the newspapers would have you believe.