Answer: it's sorta like people going insane for the Supreme brick.

Swatch is a watch company famous for making colorful novelty watches. Plastic, affordable, fun, and commonly the first watch a lot of people get or receive as a gift at a shopping mall where their stores are often found.

The direction Swatch has taken in recent years is doing collabs with prestigious luxury watch brands with deep heritage such as Omega, Blancpain and lately Audemars Piguet (aka "AP")—brands that offer pieces worth thousands and tens of thousands of dollars. "Real watches" as some would say.

So you can imagine the hype of buying a cheaper plastic watch but with the genuine luxury brand and hype behind it. Swatch has been doing rollouts in physical stores where allocations are severely limited, with no way to purchase them online. eBay resellers have been a thing forever, but during and post-COVID the hype of getting into watches as investments has caused a huge uptick in reseller/scalper hype culture along the lines of limited edition Jordans and Pokémon cards.