Quandary...steel and gold cased watches

Steel cases for sport watches makes sense. I can also understand the trend toward steel rather than precious metal for dress watches as men’s business and evening formal wear has faded in over the decades.

As I see vintage watches from 50 and 60 years ago on OF discussion and sales threads, it seems there are as many or more steel than gold watches. These watches are from a more formal time when dress watches were the popular preference.

Do the watches we see today from that distant time represent our current preferences or was the production of steel dress watches really that high? It’s also possible my perception is off or I’m just nuts (actually, don’t respond to that). It would be interesting to know the production levels or percentages of steel cased versus precious metal watches from that period.

Does anyone have insight or opinions to offer?

I suspect many fine old gold cased or gold plated watches have fallen victim to scavengers when ever the price of gold goes up.

There would probably be more surviving gold watches than steel watches of the same periods if not for the constant increases in the price of gold.

Given the number of watches I/my watchmaker have bought for the scrap price of the gold content, this is probably correct. High gold prices means there can be deals to be found on gold watches.

Gold has always been a bit out of reach for joe-average-guy. Gold filled and gold plated are within reason but don’t last. So cheaper and durable steel would always be in higher demand due to the economics of the decision.

When I look at the number of cheap “gold tone” watches glittering in my workplace I think a lot of people would like to have a real gold watch, but given what we pay the people on the line I doubt any of them will ever have one. Steel is cheap and tough... and you don’t feel nearly as bad when you ding it.