Bruno Mars Gifted Custom Royal Oaks to His Band and Manager. Now They’re Flipping Them.
In 2018, after touring the stadiums of the world, Bruno Mars gave the seven members of his now-defunct band, the Hooligans, customized Audemars Piguet Royal Oaks. The watches were solid-gold modern Royal Oak reference 15202s, decorated to commemorate Mars’s 24K Magic album and tour. Accordingly, “XXIVK” and “Magic” are engraved around the case-back, and each timepiece spins a customized solid-gold rotor with each band member’s initials.
Mars also gave an eighth Royal Oak to his manager at the time, Aaron Elharar (as evidenced by the skeletonized “AE” of the rotor). This one-of-a-kind watch wears a blue dial, rather than the gold dials on the band members’ watches. The current seller, M.S. Rau, a rarities dealer in New Orleans, recently delivered the blue-dialed Royal Oak to the Robb Report offices in New York so that we could photograph it and learn more.
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As with any Royal Oak 15202—which closely recreates the original reference 5402 of 1972 designed by Gerald Genta—the thinness, exceptional bracelet, and form factor of the Royal Oak were striking. My colleague (and preferred wrist model) Sebastien Laforest looked casually upscale wearing the watch with a navy polo and white jeans. Macro photos reveal the uncanny details of the petit tapisserie dial.
It’s a solid gold Royal Oak, so it’s a joy to wear and photograph, as I expected. What I didn’t expect when handling this watch—as well as one previously belonging to Mars’s bass player at Sotheby’s earlier this year—was sadness.
When Mars surprised his band with the watches, he took to social media with photos of the backstage presentation and wrote, “My boys continue to show the world what time it is, and a band that sings together blings together!” Mars broke up the Hooligans after that tour, and then the pandemic hit, halting the careers of touring musicians around the world. So far, the Hooligans have yet to sing together since, and with at least four of these custom Royal Oaks having been flipped, it appears they’re no longer blinging together, either.
As a veteran of the music industry, I can attest to the financial ups and downs of even the most successful careers. These cats went from playing the biggest stages in the world to flipping Royal Oaks. Scratch off some zeros from the watch and the crowd size, and I’ve been there and done that. For me, anyways, witnessing these Royal Oaks that Mars clearly intended as life-long keepsakes spill onto the open market is a bit of a bummer.
Putting emotions to the side, however, we can’t fault the collectability of these customized Royal Oaks, nor can we fault the timing of these flips. In 2018, when Mars gifted the watches, the watch market was just building serious steam. By 2020 the watch market was booming, and by 2022 it was off the chain—especially for Royal Oaks. It’s hard not to imagine that some of these musicians found their bank accounts hungrier than their sense of horological nostalgia. (One collector I spoke with suggested that Mars may have given his band these watches as a kind of nest-egg, though I think that’s a stretch, especially given the customization.)
The initials on the rotors are thinly veiled clues. For example, I had no idea which manager it was that Mars had given the blue-dial watch to, but a little internet searching revealed that the only match to “AE” would be Aaron Elharar. This special one-of-a-kind blue example is going to set you back $200,000.
Sotheby’s sold another one of the band’s watches with a gold dial in June, and this one likely belonged to the bass player, Jamareo Artis. The “JA” on the rotor makes that obvious, and Sotheby’s head of watches Jeff Hess told me as much when I previewed the timepiece earlier this year. Interestingly, this watch also sold in a direct on-line sale (with no price disclosed) to a private collector who may have been the one to re-flip it at Sotheby’s for $120,000. When Artis might have first flipped it remains unclear.
Whoever flipped first, it appears to have inspired other members of the Hooligans, and ow their manager, to do the same. Another gold-dial example (with the initials cleverly hidden by the bracelet in photos) is for sale on Chrono24.com for $220,000. Yet another with undisclosed initials is up for $145,750 at Time Piece Trading LLC. And what appears to have been saxophone and keyboardist Dwayne Dugger’s example (“DD” adorns the rotor) is for sale for $120,000 at Happy Jewelers.
That’s at least four that are no longer with their original owners, and possibly five, should that one with the hidden rotor turn out not to be one of the ones being flipped elsewhere. How quickly provenance scatters in the digital winds.
Since the Hooligans disbanded, Mars started a new band called Silk Sonic, which appears to still be up and running. Perhaps we will be seeing some Silk Sonic watches flipped when Mars moves on again to another artistic phase and another band—which, frankly speaking as a music guy, is a mark of a great artist.
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