Is it my imagination, or are we in the middle of a full blown vintage watch craze? About three weeks ago I started a thread asking the members here to opine on what qualifies as a vintage watch. Not surprisingly, the interpretation of “vintage“ as it applies to watches was pretty much all over the place. It was subjective to say the least, and in the end it reminded me of the famous quote by supreme court justice Potter Stewart when he was trying to define pornography and couldn’t quite provide a definition but ultimately said, “I know it when I see it“. In any case, it seems that anywhere you look these days someone is posting, buying, or selling a vintage watch. Of course, on the heel of this the prices of vintage watches are soaring. I’m wondering what has brought this whole thing on? Is it the fact that new offerings seem to be pretty boring lately? Could it be that new watch prices have become so ridiculously high people are looking for value in truly classic vintage pieces? Or, is this a fad or a bubble that will play itself out when people move on to the next thing?
I remember when vintage cars we use to call beaters sold cheap like vintage watches when I got into this hobby. Like a 1965 Chevy impala supper sport for 500 bucks now look what they sell for and vintage cars just keep going up. Well the same with vintage watches they only have so many like vintage cars that survived. If you just got into collecting vintage watches your a little late when they were cheap missed the boat. Glad I was not a flipper and got into it years ago and if I let one go I would never pay what I sold it for because I think the price is insane.
When I joined the forum in 2013 I was the 2561st member, when you joined in 2017 you were the 36753rd member if you joined today you would probably be close to the 60000th member.
Your the 30105th member. When you reply the last number is the members number. Look before you hit reply and you will see..... Have removed the brackets when I hit reply for your post QUOTE="eugeneandresson, post: 1343984, member: 30105"
So, if I get this straight ... as of writing : 60163 members have joined. There are 49685 members. Thus 10478 bad apples that deserve the wrath of 1000 camels' fleas (edit : according to the mods)...
That was post # 1,344,032 and I’m # 3305! Very cool. So from the middle of Jan. 2013 to the beginning of April 2013, 744 members joined. Think it’s picked up a bit since then.
I can attest. I just got interested in watches a couple of years ago. Recently, I started selling off my collection of ill-advised vintage purchases (redials, engraved casebacks, frankens, etc). In each sale, I documented these issues clearly and I was hoping to maybe get 50% of my money back. To my surprise, I've mostly broken even and, on a few sales, I made 10-15% profit. For example, I bought a little manual wind Tudor Oyster with some issues for $370; my resale eBay auction finished at $530!? I can only imagine how much fun I'd be having if I'd started collecting a couple of decades ago...
