Is Travelling With Expensive Watches Safe?

Up until recently, travelling with your expensive timepieces was a no-brainer. However, with the amount of theft and robbery cases on the rise against watch owners, the question of wearing your precious timepiece on your travels have arisen. Is it safe for you to be wearing your precious timepiece when you travel?

There has been several reports of watch theft and even daylight robbery for high value watches in several countries especially in the UK and Europe. Especially those Rolex and Pateks.

Let's start with dual time zone watches... The most famous being the Rolex GMT II Pepsi...

Below the Hermes Arceau Le Temps Voyageur... theft magnet?

For those who travel often, the question is this "Do you (dare) travel with your timezone pieces like this Edouard Koehn Worldtimer or the Harry Winston Excentre Timezone

But first, the question of necessity... Is it really necessary to be wearing a dual timezone piece when you travel? With our ubiquitous mobile phones, they can tell as many timezones as you need. So, actually, the answer is no. In fact, wearing a watch is also not necessary but men today wear them as an accessory. But with watches like this Vacheron Constantin Grand Explorer enamel series in yellow gold - exceptional piece but very visible.

What about this Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar White Ceramic? Where can you travel to that is safe enough for you to bring it along?

Or this MB&F LM1 in gold...

Iconing pieces like the Daniel Roth Papillon are so well known and easily recognisable.

There are some cities/countries where wearing high end watches are safe but then there are cities where you definitely be silly to wear an expensive timepiece on your wrist.

Then I have another question... Where do the stolen watches go to? According to a BBC report I read, it is estimated that more than £1 Billion Pounds worth of watches have been stolen. Criminal groups target those wearing high end watches and steal/rob them. One watch dealer in UK was even headlocked while being robbed in his shop. Tragically, the dealer committed suicide afterwards

So where do these stolen watches end up? Many end up in countries where regulations and enforcements are lax. In the case of Singapore, there are laws (and enforcement) where sellers have to leave their National ID details to secondary dealers. This is one way of providing traceability of the item. But Singapore and a few other countries are in the minority. Most countries might have laws but do not have tough enforcement practises making the laws a mute point.

So my question to all you collectors out there... Does wearing travel watches still make sense? Does wearing an expensive watch when you travel something you ought to think about? What do you think? I'd like to hear your thoughts on travelling with expensive watches.