Not "organic"? Would you mean bleached bezel and touched up lume? Genuine question, I'm a French speaker, some details may be lost in translation...
Not "organic"? Would you mean bleached bezel and touched up lume? Genuine question, I'm a French speaker, some details may be lost in translation...
This is the weirdest outcome of these auctions. How can someone pay 400,000 CHF for this "okeyish" 5508? Nothing explains this extremely high price relative secondary market prices. It's not a very rare watch. Condition is not exceptional. Provenance is unknown. My first guess is that the auction was inflated by buyers-on-purpose, i.e. merchants who hold inventories in early subs and who want to anchor prices as high as possible (i.e. to replicate what was done with daytonas). My second guess is that there were two lunatic buyers in the room or on the phone who have no clue of what they were buying. But of course, my first guess is my preferred option.
According to this article, the winning bid was by FP Journe himself… so I have to assume (I know, always dangerous) that he had performed a pretty thorough assessment of this watch and that it was a bit more than “okeyish”…… 😗
This is the weirdest outcome of these auctions. How can someone pay 400,000 CHF for this "okeyish" 5508?
is the post above talking about the same watch ? condition is not excpetional ? the article describes it as NOS, the pictures show an absolutely stunning piece, and the winning bidder is FP Journe ? he is neither a merchant with inventory in vintage rolexes that i know of, nor could anyone describe him as a lunatic buyer ? i am guessing this was a very special piece indeed ?
indeed. how anyone could describe this watch condition as "okey-ish" i have no idea assuming it is all original. i am guessing mr. journe did his homework
I am certainly no early version Rolex Sub expert, but when I had the pleasure of inspecting this watch, it was absolutely stunning. As close to NOS as I had ever seen…
on a related note. . it is interesting how much more 'efficient' the watch market appears to be getting with respect to originality and condition. not always, but much more so than a few years ago. however, with all original a+ watches like this going for 3x+ what a "normal" watch would fetch. . it makes looking at auction histories much more difficult and the market much more opaque. unless you are an expert and have handled these watches in person, who knows what to make of a particular auction "print" or trend. so instead of more transparency we have a market that is very hard to get a handle on. . .seems like it makes the trustworthy expert dealer (however few and far between they may be) exceptionally valuable. . .
I would love to have access to a nice database that would have compiled all attributes of the watches sold so far at auction, forums etc. With elements such as: marque, model, reference, condition, box and papers, number of previous owners, provenance, documentation, etc. Etc. To run a nice little PCA analysis or even PLS vs. price… but I digress. 😟
