FEATURE: The Alec Monopoly TAG Heuer Formula One

As the saying goes, 'hindsight is always 20/20' and it appears that in the case of the Alec Monopoly Limited Edition that holds especially true.

When the watch was launched a month or two ago, I was undecided. I kinda liked it, but wasn't prepared to put my money where my mouth was, partly because I didn't want another basic quartz Formula One and partly because I wasn't entirely sure how it was going to fair on the second hand market. Indeed, I must admit I was rather hoping one of the 200 pieces might rock up on Watchfinder at some point for £800 or so...

Well, it appears that hope is somewhat forlorn, because while the watches have been turning up on eBay (and crucially selling) far from taking a hit, they are fetching three times their original price!

Which means, not only did I miss out on potentially making myself a tidy profit, but now I will most likely never own one because I will be competing with the Alec Monopoly fans rather than the TAG Heuer buyers (who probably wouldn't have paid over the odds).

So the question is, should we have seen this coming? Did we just totally underestimate Alec Monopoly's fan-base and draw?

I must admit I was (still am) pretty ignorant about Alec, although I do remember seeing one of his sculptures in a gallery in Bond Street. I think for most of us TAG fans, Alec was just another one of the endless 'brand ambassadors' we neither wanted nor understood, and even worse this guy was just a graffiti artist who liked to cover his face and vandalize diamond encrusted Carrera Tourbillons!

Well, these days, as we know... a measure of one's success is how many followers one has on social media, and in this regard Alec is doing well with 39,100 followers on Instagram. Perhaps then, 200 watches was a pretty easy sell? After all, I dare say Alec's original art is probably out of the reach of most people's pockets so what cooler thing to own than a very limited Swiss watch at a very reasonable price (the Alec Monopoly Ltd was sold at basically the same price as the standard model).

You know, the more I look at it, the more I like it and the more I feel I should have realised this was going to be something of value. I mean look at it, yes I know some people hate it, and everything it represents, but can you point to any other TAG Heuer that is so unique and appeals to the market beyond watch afficionados.

I did kind of feel that it might be an investment, but I wasn't sure and equally I thought it might fall flat on it's face and I didn't want to take the risk. And as we all know, buying watches as investments is generally a terrible idea, so I erred on the side of caution and now I'm left to rue my mistake.

Worst of all, I think even if the price had tanked, I think the watch has grown on me so much that I think I would have bought one anyway... but now that's not going to happen. Which is a shame.

On top of all that, I actually found this artwork that Alec did that I actually quite like...

Still, who knows what the long term price of the watch will be. It could be that these early re-sales are abberations and the price will settle eventually as more come onto the market. Maybe in a few years it will be possible to pick one up at a much more reasonable price, but that will probably depend to a large degree on the career arc of Mr Monopoly, because I believe this watch will not obey usual watch rules and the value will be driven by his fans and not TAG Heuer fans.

https://www.instagram.com/alecmonopolyart/?hl=en