Who Watches the Watchmen (Our Chit Chat Thread)

Nope. I'm just reporting on the patterns that are constantly repeated. Few enough things in our lives have intrinsic value, which the askaboutmoney guy seems oblivious to. That's part and parcel of the abstraction that made humans what we became and are today. Much of it is down to the agreed confidence in the abstraction. The fifty quid in his pocket is intrinsically worthless, but on the other hand it's not, because we all agree that it's not. That's pretty solid. Given the traction something like bitcoin has as an agreed value(it varies, but then so does "real" money) and an extra utility beyond traditional currency it seems solid enough to me anyway.

Beyond that we have things on the edge like collectables that are not universally value agreed, or are more likely to be confidence as a transitory valued thing and watches would be in that area. This is very subjective to time, place and people. The can't give them away 70's 40 quid Daytona is now a couple of hundred grand piece. Same watch. Different time. I was reading an interview with Peter Roberts(big noise in the watchmaking game) and he noted the 40 quid Daytonas and that people who had bought one were asking to swap out the "fancy dials"(Paul Newman style) for more conventional ones, the fancy dials went in the bin. His advice after all the years in the biz was to buy the unpopular watches because they're the most likely to be the more desireable. The ones nobody wants end up being the ones that everybody wants.

However, that's vintage where items are finite, many are actually rare and they're not making them anymore(unless you're Longines, or Rolex who never stopped...). The new market is very different, well it is if you're a flipper or 'investing', where the watch is barely cold from the wrist and wristshot on the Gram, before it's released back into the water ready for another wrist and wristshot to warm it up. In that market Fitz is 100% right. Buy what you like, but never buy a watch you just like. As for buying 'classics' in such a market, yep learn what they are, because it's quite narrow and dependent on the market of the time. 'Classic taste' is often very time dependant. QV Panerai. Around '05 Pannies were in short supply, good luck on getting discounts and the used market was strong and interest was very high. Forums were set up, bloggists waxed lyrical and all was right in the world. By around 2015 things had dropped off, today you barely hear about them, they're rare on the 'Tube, the forums fell silent and they're a hard enough sell new or secondhand. Now there are all sorts of explanations for this drop; RRP went up year on year(hardly exclusive to Panerai), waiting lists for 'limited editions' in ADs, talk of dodgy servicing and too many limited editions etc. For me though the simplest explanation is fashion changed, the interest just went elsewhere. Very similar happened with IWC before them. Ditto for TAG in the wider world. All good brands and watches. Going on past history the peak interest wave seems to last between five and ten years.

As for Fitz' "Bubbles burst but they also reinflate". Eh... nope. They don't. Outside of property bubbles(because new customers keep being born and need somewhere to live) and the general rise and fall pattern of economies, asset bubbles deflate and stay that way. About the only variable is by how much. One exception might be classic cars, but even there it's complicated and tied to fashion and things like the 30 year rule(which is likely a thing of the past going forward). Plus too many look at the very rarified high end and think that reflects the norm where most live. It doesn't. Ferrari F40's went nuts in the 90's, then fell off a cliff when that bubble burst, now they're back up again. The F40's of the world will always be sought after, the Peugeot 205 GTi's not so much. Again to take the Panerai example; new Pannies are not close to the sell they once where, but if you find an 80 year old Kampfschwimmer in your drawer, it's still ker-ching! and will likely remain so. Though if you do, spend it quick, what with the amount of gamma rays them things fire out. 😮😁

Yes if you eliminate all the pesky supporting examples you might be right.

Housing and cars. The former being completely different, the latter being the closest to watches, but more in the vintage realm and nothing like the boom of brand new watches hitting near double their price secondhand over a period of a few years. The only example sort of like that I can think of in the car world is in the US where for a time the recent Honda Civic Type R's were being sold at dealers over list because of demand and that's since died off(the US car market is nuts anyway).

In the last 50 years of history of Rolex watches its yet happen that a watch goes down and stays down

Until five or six years ago outside of very rarified vintage examples used Rolex were cheaper than new and new could be had at a discount. If you want to go back over the last fifty years your statement is beyond ridiculous. Oysterquartz values dropped from their peak and stayed down. Vintage Bubblebacks and Oysters peaked like crazy and then fell off a cliff and remain down. Cellini's never went up in the first place save for a tiny dresswatch blip in the 90's which then un-blipped(though they're now being pushed by dealers). You couldn't give Daytonas away in the vintage market until the 90's when the interest in their new autos and vintage in general kicked in. Two tone Rolex were considered poison in the secondary and vintage market and their values reflected that. Yes they've gone up since, however the recent upswing is well, very recent and a case of a rising tide floating all boats and the perception of not enough boats to go around. It most certainly doesn't have close to a five decade trend behind it. Unless you want to say pretty much all mechanical watches have risen in price in that time, RRP and vintage which would be more generally the case.

outside smaller interpersonal interactions there is little mutual admiration between collectors, it's too competitive, and even when your winning people feel the need to warn you constantly that if you play there is a risk you wont win.

That I agree with you alright Fitz. Though I would say that's also quite a recent development and it's very much involving one section of the hobby. In the last decade the hobby has changed a lot. Previously those collecting new/current model watches were very much the minority and their focus was also much wider. The majority were collecting older and vintage stuff and again their focus was much wider. Terms like investments and liquidity were almost never brought up and when it was it was in recent years when established collectors and newbs were feeling frozen out of the hobby by the dealers and investors. Even among niches like military issued stuff few enough were only collecting say IWC pieces. Competitive stuff was also among a small minority and mutual admiration was far more in play and you regularly saw examples of people helping other collectors get parts to complete projects, or watches to complete themed collections and a lot of sharing of information to help people avoid being stung by snides and dodgy dealers and to increase general horological knowledge. You can still get that in a forum like MWR, though the numbers have fallen a lot. You can see this shift in a big site like WUS. The general forum where it's almost all to do with current fare of late the snark is rarely far away. In the vintage and specialist type forums the snark is still much rarer to see and mutual admiration is pretty common and consistent(I largely gave up on WUS because of the snark in the general forum and the drop off in the vintage). Even within Rolex collectors you can see this. I know one lad online for donkey's who has a collection of vintage Rollies that would scare us(Comexs, early Cosmographs, Milsubs and the like) and he's mentioned in PM's the difference that's come into 'his' Rolex world and he tends to avoid the current market spaces online because of it. I'd agree with you here too, we're not all playing the same game.

The post war British aviation industry is a fascinating time. They were on the cutting edge of many things, but government mismanagement screwed them over. Chuck Yeagar and his Bell X-1 would have taken a little longer to break the sound barrier without the Brit's extensive research that went directly into the design of that airframe. They basically gave it all away, or were forced to. Same with the very early days of computing. They were at the leading edge there too. Mad.

Yep and what was left they got from the Nazis. Sorry, upstanding German American citizens. 😁

Slide film is astonishing; 60 years on and look at them! I did photoshop away some dust and other blemishes, but I do wonder how many people who take digital photos are going to still have them accessible by their descendents 60 years from now. I have family photos that are over 100 years old.

Kodachrome was the absolute bomb. Digital doesn't come close and to get close you need to fiddle with it to a scary degree. And I would agree as far as digital snap's longevity. The cloud has helped, but I wouldn't trust it for centuries. The envelope of negatives in your granny's sideboard is a much safer bet. I've seen stuff lost already and a few times. Photos backed up to CD's that failed over time, or backed up to now defunct media. Two years ago someone I know found a load of her late dad's correspondence and photos. Problem was they were all on Zip disks. Luckily for her I have a functioning Zip drive and was able to retrieve them. It was a third part expansion bay zip drive that fitted a PowerBook G3 Pismo from 2000. That still works too and I use it on occasion. I've posted a fair few times to here on it.

My treasured Seiko LCD digital - one of the first - which likely cost my poor parents a bomb in the 70's became irreperable when the LCD leaked LC goo everywhere. Similarly, I have my late brothers spectacularly thin Longines Split 5 and the LCD on that has leaked it's goo also. Uselees...

If you like C, I can get digging with my contacts to see if I can get a new LCD for both. The Seiko should be findable. The Longines may prove more difficult as they often used bought in boards and screens but tweaked them to their own specs. My dad's first series Seiko calculator watch had a screen that had faded and a non working bulb and I was able to find a NOS one and replace it. The electronics back then were quite 'big' compared to later stuff and more modular too so they are more fixable. When I took the seiko calculator apart I never expected the keys were all individually placed... That was a fun few minutes on my hands and knees on the floor as the air turned blue. 😁

Your Longines Split 5 would be 'interesting' to take apart. They were scary thin. As was the fashion in them days. Then again soon after wristwatches came out the brands competed with each other to make every new model as small and thin as possible to show off their skillz. By the 1920's you ended up with men's Tank watches that were 25mm by 34mm lug to lug and 8mm thick. So I suppose it's not a surprise that when quartz came out, which led to a big leap in watch sizes simply because the early movements were so large(which heavily influenced 1970's mechanical watch sizes), that when the tech improved they revisited the "look how small and thin we can make them" trend. That lasted well into the 1980's. I remember when my dad got his Longines VHP in 85 he marvelled at how thin, elegant and light i was. 32mm. The ladies version was so small, you'd need to look down the wrong end of the Hubble telescope to tell the time. 😁