There was so much focus on the success of central London luxury watch retailers in 2016, you could be forgiven for thinking that nobody outside the capital was interested or could afford high end timepieces.
Research by HomeProtect, a national home insurance company, suggests otherwise.
The company analysed named items on household insurance from policies worth £14 million that it currently has on its books, and discovered that 11% of homes across the UK list a Rolex among their most treasured goods.
London and the South East does account for the highest number of Rolex-owning households, but has far less than one-third of the total at just 29% of the national total.
The East Midlands, which includes Nottingham, Leicester and Derby, comes second with 15% of the national total, closely followed by the West Midlands, mostly homes in Birmingham and Coventry, with 11%.
The remainder of Rolex households are quite evenly spread across the UK, with Scotland, Wales and every other region of England accounting for 8-10% of the total.
The age of Rolex owners is less of a surprise, with the majority squirreled away by pensioners. The HomeProtect research found the average Rolex owner is 68, with male owners outnumbering women almost two to one. Their numbers are overwhelming. 66% of the people in our survey are aged over 65 and only 1.5% under the age of 35.
- Read the full report from HomeProtect in the March edition of WatchPro.
