How hard is it to get the rolex you want

The perception of rarity is another aspect in this. Take yer man's example of the daytona. Go to chrono24 and search Daytona and there's over five thousand of the things across 90 pages. Type in Rolex and you get over seventy thousand examples. And that's just one non AD outlet. Now granted not all daytonas or rolex are the current hot tickets, but that's an awful lot of watches and hot tickets are entirely down to current fashions. Across all outlets worldwide there's probably well over a quarter of a million of the yokes. Hell, Rolex produce around a million watches per year. Patek which are way more upmarket and exclusive, or used to be, produce what? Nearly a hundred thousand watches per year? Now stretch those numbers out over the last decade, nigh on ten million Rolex, a million Pateks. Them's big numbers. Now their prices have increasingly become rarified, but these are not rare items. If you have the cash you can get one now. If you have the cash and that's the cache driven by the current market. Add in the "investment" notion and you get the current mania and those in any current manic market are always convinced this time it's different, this time it'll always go north. .

As for the multiples of people having the financial means. They pretty much always did, it's not as if a mass group of men(in this case) suddenly got way richer in the last five years. At least over the last couple of generations there always been middle aged middle class men with cash to flash. They weren't buying "luxury" watches though, or far fewer were and it was a individual speciifc non mainstream interest.

Even within the buying watches as a thing market there are differences in the segments. Looking at the vintage market which was once on a high sales have stagnated and prices are dropping. I've seen pre TAG vintage Heuers go from a couple of grand up to ten and above and now are dropping fast, or not selling. Ten years ago you could pick up a Heuer BUND for under two grand, at their peak they were changing hands at six, now I see very nice examples at three and a half not selling and in open auctions three is about right. Dealers and the market inflated the prices and buyers went along with it, but now they're baulking at it. You even see this in spares prices. Dealer price of a BUND dial? 300 quids plus. Auction price of a BUND dial? 90. And vintage stuff by its very nature is a finite supply market and often actually rare. In many cases you better buy now or you won't see another. You certainly won't have 90 pages of examples to choose from.

Oh certainly covid had an effect over the last year Unk, but the cray cray prices thing has been running from before covid. Basically over the last five or so years.