I've only just joined this great message board so I've still got my training wheels on. Being familiar with message board dynamics I know how annoying a noob like myself can be to the established posters. With that in mind I beg your patience until I learn the ropes a little.

Here's my question: Does anyone know approximately what the percentage of full gold cased watches sold by Longines was for vintage references?

I already noticed a common theme in a few threads of posters lamenting that we lost a lot of gold Longines watches being "parted out" and having the cases melted down for the gold value.

I think the sudden 35% drop in the price of gold put a stop to this nonsense and now I'm left curious as to how many Longines actually survived?

Manufactures like Hamilton and Longines seemed suffer a lot of losses because their watches never carried much of a premium.

Is it possible that many common Longines references could now actually be scarce (gold models)?

 

I rather doubt it.

They were produced in sufficient quantities that a significant (80 to 90%) of any given reference would need to have been scrapped to make any of them scarce.

 

If you're asking what the amount of solid gold watches compared to stainless and gold filled watches were, I can't answer that. I can say there's no shortage of 14ct models around even though you see many, many more gold filled versions. Pretty sure there were less stainless cases than gold filled if you go by what you see available on eBay and other sales mediums.

Certain models are pretty scarce in 18ct cases. For example, I've only seen 5 or 6 18ct Ultra-Chron C-case caliber 431's in the last 4-ish years. At least 2 of them are owned by members here - me and LouS and there might be another. Of the ones I've seen, 2 were in poor shape.

Flagships originally only came in 18ct or stainless cases until the name was bastardized because of their popularity somewhere in the middle of the 60's. Longines started installing lesser quality movements like the manual wind 490 (based on the Marvin 700) instead of the in-house 30L series, and the automatic 380 (based on the Cyma 480) instead of the in-house 34x series. Both were very good movements, just not what you'd expect from the previously high end watches that Longines put out. Going by how highly rated the name brand was back then, you could equate it to Rolex switching to the Peseux 7001 in their Cellini or the ETA 2982-A2 in the Sub.

There are plenty of Admirals around in 14ct. Usually you get them with the front loading case and a 34x series automatic, but once in a while you do see a solid gold model with a detachable case back and a 50x series which was based on the Record 195x calibers. Longines acquired Record in 1961, so it's a technicality to call these in-house. Most of us don't regard them as such though.

 

Yes - post from a computer!

Depends on what model. As above, 18ct Ultra-Chron C-cases are scarce, but 14ct ones pop up often enough. Two tones with gold bezels and steel center cases or gold filled versions are fairly common. Many Flagships will be in solid gold, especially early ones. Couldn't say how many no-name models were offered in solid gold though.