I own a Wright Flyer. I purchased the watch specifically for the piece of the Wright Flyer and have come to love the watch. I have spent 30 years in aviation and am a third generation aircraft mechanic who grew up surrounded by talk of aeroplanes. I no longer fix aircraft but I am still in the industry as a commercial aircraft trader and recycler.
Adding a piece of the first powered aircraft to my existing aviation memorabilia collection was a big moment for me especially as it was all validated by the Wright Foundation. I was in Dubai on holidays with the family and in the Dubai mall a Jewlers had it on display. At the dollar exchange rate back in 2016 the sticker price was $25,000.00. Business was great then (unlike now) but I was still struggling to accept spending that much money on myself until my wife persuaded me to buy it.
I sat down, tried it on and decided to go for it. Being a professional back street carpet trader I demanded a discount or no deal and to my surprise was refused. The nice chap explained to me that during the festival of Eid they had a very special offer called “50 Back”. Basically this meant for every dollar I spent they would give me $0.50c back to spend in their shop. My darling wife was only too delighted to hear this and immediately pointed to an Omega constellation she had been eyeing up. So we snagged the Omega and still had money to spend. We ended up getting her father an Omega De Ville with the remainder of the credit note.
So did I pay $25k for the Bremont and get two free Omega's or did I pay $12,5 for the Bremont and list for the Omega’s. The wife and I still laugh about it. How they make money with this 50 Back I don’t know, maybe its house cleaning where they off load old stock.
Finally, I am standing in the shop looking
at all my purchases and I go straight back into carpet trader mode, I asked the now delighted sales man if he could ship the boxes back to Europe for me as I didn’t want to carry them, he obliged. We wore the watches home and the chap in the boutique even sized my Rolex OP39 for my then 8 year old son to wear. My gut feeling was right as we were stopped at customs in Frankfurt, they went through our suitcases, found nothing and let us go. Chap in front of us in the line got Shafted for 20 cartons of Marlboro.
I have my eye on a Bremont Concord and Spruce Goose but until the aviation industry is on the up again they will remain on the wish list.
As I have repeated in other posts, my one true love is the Speedy, everything else is nice to have.