Rare find.

unkel wrote: »

A median wage in the UK would have been just a few hundred pounds back then, so indeed, in those terms the GBP70 back then is the equivalent of the price of a second hand Rolex today (say GBP7k), so not pocket change at all! It just turned out to be super rare 60 years later.

Unless you're talking about a yearly wage, the average UK weekly wage in the early 60's was nothing like a few hundred pounds U, that was big money, it was around 10 and 14 quid a week. If you look at any of the inflation/currency by year sites 70 quid isn't close to 7000, it's between 1600 and 2000, which was the range of a "very good watch" for life.

Another thing that was fundamentally different back then; the brands were independent and vying for the same customers at different price points in the same jeweller's shop window. And targetted heavy duty advertising was very much less a thing. They had to remain competitive within their price ranges or risked losing custom, so say high end divers would be all roughly the same price across brands, lower end dress watches the same.

In essence we can't equate watch prices then with watch prices now. After the resurgence of mechanical watches many of the Swiss brands have massively increased their prices relevant to inflation and other metrics. EG an Omega Speedmaster(not special edition) is at least four times the actual price it was when Apollo astronauts were swanning around on the moon wearing them. RRP Rolex prices have gone through the roof. Zenith's prices have near doubled since the 90's. Breguet were an early outlier in that they heaved up their prices in the 60's, hence the French military issued examples are far rarer than the civilian as the French gov told them to head off after the price rise.