Being fairly new to this lark, I'm quite curious about perceived value and sometimes a little puzzled. I keep seeing comments on Omega forums about watches being over-priced, but I hardly ever see any for sale at the prices they are supposedly worth.. Maybe it's because I'm in the UK and am either looking at UK examples or unconsciously factoring in the taxes to have them sent here.
At the end of the day, if 90% of watches for sale are going for a particular price and they are selling, then isn't that their value? As with anything else you can hunt around / wait for a "bargain", but it might never come and the choice will be far more restricted.
For example, if I'm looking for a c-case stainless steel Constellation in nice condition (sharp case, clean dial), I'm finding it very difficult to find any that are much under £1000 ($1200), and most are a little more. Is that overpriced?
Omega prices at least seem half-consistent and there are enough examples out there to provide a good sample. I'm finding it much difficult with other brands (e.g. vintage Longines, IWC, Girard Perregaux) to figure out what the actual value of a given model is, in some cases because the particular model I'm lookng at is actually pretty rare so there's very little to go on.