Rolex at retail prices

Yeah Daytonas as a desirable model is a remarkably recent thing. The reason the 60's ones are so rare is because they just couldn't sell them. They were essentially a flop. Now it's been suggested it was because they couldn't be had as automatics until the 90's, when they started to get some interest, but there were plenty of chronographs that sold and sold well in from the 20's to the 60's before auto chronos were available. Rolex weren't seen as a chronograph manufacturer. Again some reckon it's because they didn't make their own movements, but that didn't stop Heuer becoming a chronograph brand. Rolex were always the mid tier solid tool watch brand. Cellinis save for a brief time in the 80's/90's didn't sell either, because Rolex weren't/aren't seen as a dress watch company. TBH I like a few of the Cellini designs down the years.

Datejusts were popular in the 80's but again were cheaper used. Different market. Pateks were always pricey. Not as mad as today but not cheap, but yeah very few people would have ever had heard of them. Pre the internet when I was into "old watches" the only brands I knew were those I saw in ads in magazines and what was on display in shop windows. I had heard of Patek because my dad had one and there was usually a fancy complicated one in the window of Weir on Grafton Street. For 8000 punts!!! :eek: I never saw one come up in house/general auctions I attended. And funny enough because my dad had one I had seen them as "oul lad" watches. His was a time only 50's gold dress job mind you. If he'd had a steel Nautilus I'd likely have had a very different view. Back then you could have offered me a Blancpain Fifty Fathoms for a hundred quid and I might have passed because the name would have meant nada to me. Like I say different times.

The investment angle with Rolex is certainly there Ri. Currently. My point being that it's quite the recent thing, less than ten years and the wider hype mania is less than five years. Great if you're flipping watches today. Crap if you just want to buy one without selling your soul to some muppet in a shop or paying well over the odds to some other muppet, so you can brag to more muppets with shaved wrists on instagram. No one can divine the future and anyone who tells you they can is trying to sell you an imaginary future that suits them, but one thing is consistently true; these trends always and I mean always come and then go and the bigger the hype the more this is in play. Will Rolex prices collapse? No. Mainly because at the sniff of that Rolex will constrain supply. Again. However they will almost certainly soften and the paying over the odds for a new model will go away. It's just a case of when, not if.