The most important quartz ... now on Hodinkee

Mredsnapper

@Wibbs looks like your gp quartz is front page on Hodinkee.

http://www.hodinkee.com/blog/the-restoration-of-the-girard-perregaux-caliber-350

Wibbs

Feckers have been stalking me. Oh well… *puts my example in safe deposit box cos of the Hodinkee bump*

Wibbs

Oh and I gave the chap much of his info on that piece a few months ago when he posted it on his blog. Small world. Though even he, a well clued in dude is unsure about some of the details. Just goes to show how remarkably little is known of the period. Mad, given it wasn't exactly the dark ages.

CarltonBrowne

Well, I suppose that I can now kiss goodbye to my dream of getting a circuit dial GP352 like Wibbs's* at a sensible price. I now have 4 GP35x-engined watches including 2 JLCs and I suppose I should be pleased that residuals will probably improve on the back of Hodinkee coverage but I'm not. I've seen what Hodinkee has done to the price of vintage UG chronos - a bandwagon I've yet to hop on to - and I remain unimpressed. And I don't actually have a GP-branded one yet, bizarrely enough.







*I worry about that apostrophe.

Wibbs

I'd be thinking Wibbs' myself, though...

Yea I know what you mean re the Hodinkee bump CB. Though I think for the majority of their readers quartz is the very devil and that's largely coming out in the comments, or lack of the usual posters going ohh and ahh over a 50's steel Patek with slightly different minute markers that ups the price by forty grand. One poster reckons this is a lead up to a big ticket auction house drumming up interest for an upcoming early quartz sale and if that's the case(which wouldn't surprise TBH) then it could hit the rest of us interested in the period… Though I've kinda been here before. In the late 90's the various auction houses went batshít crazy for Trench watches and the prices went batshít crazy on the back of it. A year later, the madness had subsided and normal folks could get back in at pre batshít prices. These days maybe not. Bullshít travels faster.

I like Hodinkee. It has some very cool articles and is much less industry puff piece than some who are more than slavishly blatant about it, still as Orwell noted "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed; everything else is public relations" and watch journalism overwhelmingly falls into the latter category. There are three "respected journalists" I can think of that are pretty much mewling mouthpieces Swiss marketing board sycophants.

blue5000

Wibbs wrote: »

I'd be thinking Wibbs' myself, though...

Yea I know what you mean re the Hodinkee bump CB. Though I think for the majority of their readers quartz is the very devil and that's largely coming out in the comments, or lack of the usual posters going ohh and ahh over a 50's steel Patek with slightly different minute markers that ups the price by forty grand. One poster reckons this is a lead up to a big ticket auction house drumming up interest for an upcoming early quartz sale and if that's the case(which wouldn't surprise TBH) then it could hit the rest of us interested in the period… Though I've kinda been here before. In the late 90's the various auction houses went batshít crazy for Trench watches and the prices went batshít crazy on the back of it. A year later, the madness had subsided and normal folks could get back in at pre batshít prices. These days maybe not. Bullshít travels faster.

I like Hodinkee. It has some very cool articles and is much less industry puff piece than some who are more than slavishly blatant about it, still as Orwell noted "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed; everything else is public relations" and watch journalism overwhelmingly falls into the latter category. There are three "respected journalists" I can think of that are pretty much mewling mouthpieces Swiss marketing board sycophants.

I take it Archie luxury is not one of these then?:D

Wibbs

Archie while a sweaty stain on youtube is not one of them, no. Though his focus of Patek and Rolex is so narrow he could look through a keyhole with both eyes, his rantings are actually more honest than 80% of watch journalism out there. Industry journalism can be incestuous anyway, but the watch industry variety can beggar belief at times. They really have to watch their P's and Q's or they quite simply lose access to the manufacturers, so most of what you read about the "big boys" are puffed up press releases(sometimes near word for word) with a new byline.

Hodinkee's connections seem to be primarily some in the big auction houses so the same type of high ticket vintage stuff tends to roll up. Their quartz week was interesting and it'll be interesting to see if an auction featuring such watches comes along… Even there look at the names and models they featured. Mostly gaudy Patek, Piaget and IWC, and over valued too.