Err.... any chance it could be mine one day? Pleeease?

 

I love it when a thread comes full circle Coz that's exactly the point that Vintagewtchzilla was making ...anyhoo...grandma needs to eat...

 

no i am not dutch but who cares ....

i totally agree with @jimmyd13 as long as you have not better proof than just a guess i will stick with my opinion that there are only a "few" arround. i highly respect simon and his meaning.

 

thx and yes @oddboy nail it down to the essence

 

Full circle, I was getting confused. Lets just call all 2998's rare and desirable.
The dollars decide HOW rare and desireable!

 

Blind guy with an elephant knows that the holy grail was not produced in 1986 but in 1987 and 1988 and you have switched from rarity and numbers in existence ,which is the purpose of this thread ,to price and desirability and you swerve round the acknowledgement of the high numbers of 2998 still in existence

and despite the fact that I quoted Simon I live for a significant part of the year in the USA and amazingly notwithstanding your unsupported guess work the experiences of my American watchmakers agree with Simons contention wholeheartedly and although you are referencing the forum and Simon as a support for potentially skewed data sampling I suggest you chat to Tony Cole of STS who has a a massively higher exposure to the U.K. vintage watch population than Simon and who has arguably seen more 2998 s than anyone in the U.K.

And I am afraid you rather step on your own point if a watch maker is seeing a 1987 Watches with a limited production run of 1500 world wide and those watches sell for £17500 average and he’s seeing more than four times as many older Watches of a similar price point it’s is reasonable to assume that there is at least more than twice as many older Watches in existence [note I am discounting the necessary service requirement for the older watch despite the fact of them not being worn]

And finally your deprivation

 

Permanently repeating your weird comparison doesn’t make it stronger.

About rarity and so on, just compare the number of public sales for those references. A speedymoon or a holy grail in great condition i can buy each day ... for a good 2998 it’s a little more complicated

 

You have to consider what we deem as “attrited”.

For watches, you can’t repaint a dial or mess with the lume. You can’t restore the case without affecting the value greatly.

Cars can be restored and repainted. It’s acceptable in the car collecting community afaik.

Arguably, the cars attrition rate will be way lower than watches just because we have a more stringent criteria for watches.

Also, do consider that the holy grail, as you mentioned so clearly twice, was produced almost 30 years later. It was way after speedmaster was established as a popular model and it was also after the speedmaster was associated with the moon landing. People in the 80-90s were more likely to protect and preserve their watch.

 

I'll take a speedymoon in great condition please

 

Mentioned on the news today - www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-41597833

 

I would agree, the only fault I see is the minute hand. I think you can see the crud in between the links an the bracelet. An honest watch when all cleaned up will be quite respectable.
I am not up on prices so have no comment on that....

 

If you do call STS to chat to him, it may be best to get the name right: Tony Coe.

 

I think it will not give accurate results to make such assumptions above.

While it is fun, and points us in the right direction, the actual numbers in existance is very hard to nail down, and a small error in an early assumption will unduly skew the end result.

I "feel" that we see two or three 2998's a month come on the market via ebay, OF or Chrono24 - and we could probably add in the B&M auctions too. That figure has been as high as five recently and sometimes we see none (Well no "fresh" ones) for a while.

Then there might be a further number of transactions that I do not hear about - Messrs. Davidoff et al will be selling and I can only guess at those higher end dealer's numbers.

The ONLY thing I am sure about is that the ratio of straight lug to Daytonas on the market is very small. So my GUESS is that there are far fewer Omegas than Rolex.

How many do I think there are? Well quite a lot, but clumped in collectors hands. I know of at least three collectors with 10 each. And I am not social. I met a High End Rolex dealer the other day who said he had 20 Paul Newman Daytonas in the safe. Show me an Omega dealer that has that!

So I think the collectors hold the stock of Straight Lug Speedmasters, as opposed to the Rolex World where I think the high proportion of daytonas could be held by dealers.

If I am wrong, then there are even more Daytonas than I imagined.

 

I thought only me was amazed/surprised by this sold price. Jessssss

 

Unpolished, untouched condition, gilt hands, Underline Dial , box and paper with a cool story. Somebody must have really wanted it...

 

Re the Rolex I liked this potion of the text from the news article:

Chris Elmy, from Lockdales Auctioneers, said: "The owner wishes to remain anonymous, but apparently the watch had once been rescued from a cement mixer, when it fell off his wrist.

"Lucky it didn't do much damage."

He said, according to the successful bidder, one of the reasons why the watch is so valuable is because the dial is in "such good condition".

The orange numerals also make it "incredibly rare", he said.

 

Orange numerals was really a rookie way of describing the lume plots. It was just regular aged/patina-ed tritium.

 

I know. It made me smile when reading that.

 

Turned up here I think.

 

You have good taste ..far nicer I suggest