Over 6,100 Rolexes and other luxury watches were reported stolen in London in 2022, marking a grim new record.
More than £139mln worth of watches have been stolen since 2018, often through violent attacks by weaponised moped gangs, according to data sourced from a Freedom of Information Act (FOI) request by online marketplace Watchfinder & Co.
Watch thefts in London accounted for 41% of cases nationwide last year, although crimes have been increasing across the UK.
One victim told the Evening Standard of how he and his wife were attacked on Queen Street in Mayfair in the afternoon ahead of a Coldplay concert in September by two men on mopeds brandishing a machete and knife.
A sentence of nine and a half years in prison was given out by a judge for stealing a £145,000 watch near Embankment station in an attack that was caught on CCTV, showing the attacker pretending to befriend the victim before choking him and leaving him unconscious.
Detectives were reported to be hunting a gang using mopeds and e-bikes that had carried out more than a hundred street robberies of high-value watches in central London, with other reports suggesting high-end timepieces are being “stolen to order” by thieves combing through social media profiles.
In one incident, a man in his 50s was knocked down by two people on a motorbike in Oakley Street, Chelsea around 9pm on July 4.
Two other thieves were sentenced after posting pictures online of themselves wearing their stolen loot.
In November, a man had his watch stolen in an attack where he was punched and choked by three men after he fell asleep on the top deck of the N133 bus. The assailant was identified through CCTV footage and sentenced to eight years behind bars.
Violent thefts have continued to be recorded in 2023. In March, one man in Balham had his skull fractured after being struck on the head with a weapon several times before snatching a Rolex worth £6,000 from his wrist.
It's not just Rolexes though, with boxer Amir Khan was robbed at gunpoint for his £70,000 bespoke, diamond-encrusted Franck Muller watch in April after leaving a restaurant in Knightsbridge.
Security experts at Intelligent Protection International said stolen watches can be sold on the black market from between a tenth to a fifth of their value.