Hi guys. As a newbie to Omega collecting,(other than condition and personal value of a piece) is there a guide of any sort when it comes to deciding on how rare a particular watch is? I know value is a bit subjective, but I more or less mean value when it comes to scarcity of a piece. For example, is there a list of any kind that would tell how many of a particular model were produced? I apologize if this has a simple answer, but don't know how to begin familiarizing myself with a good buy when I see one. Thanks in advance.

 

Simple answer: very few Omegas are rare. They made a LOT of watches in the 50's and especially the 60's. I'm not aware of any definitive guide to how many of each model were made.

 

That was sort of what I suspected. Thanks for clarifying though. I appreciate it guys.

 

I think condition and popularity are soooo much more important than rarity when it comes to value - and popularity can be decided by lots of simple factors - for example, ladies don't often collect vintage watches, so they are usually significantly cheaper. Size is important - anything less than 36mm is at an immediate disadvantage in this world of plate sized wrist timepieces. Gold content sets a minimum value, but stainless steel maybe more sought after. There are watches that are already popular and a good condition pie pan, early speedmaster or 300 diver is not going to lose you money, but to make the most you probably need to guess whats jumping next. I'm not sure rarity plays much of a factor most of the time.

 

I get that, but what I'm trying to say is there were millions of pie pans, and probably a lot less speedy mk4.5s, but the speedys aren't worth any more because they aren't in so much demand. So in the formula, rarity doesn't really come close in terms of impact on value (which is what the op was asking about) compared to popularity and condition...

happy to drop this if I'm only making sense to myself...

 

A member of another forum, Francois Boucher put together a list of omega calibers with production numbers. That's about as close as you will get to an answer But as others have said nothing that will help with particular model production runs Except for some of the known rare models/calibers and recent le's.

 

Thanks guys. I wanted to see if there was any other info other than condition and supply and demand at play. In any case, I'm not necessarily flipping watches, just interested in knowing more about any info that's out there on these pieces.