This thread took a strange turn. I guess no one wants to be a Cassandra.
I have been collecting for 30 years. The first 10 or so were intense, I then found another interest and put the watches on hold for 18 or so years. Not completely. The passion was still there just not the motivation.
The last year the passion returned. There had been some other attempts at revival which fizzled.
I noticed that I returned to many of my old bad habits. In a lot of ways the low end has not changed much in 30 years. Adjusted for inflation I might even be paying less now than I was 25 or so years ago when I was at peak. Main difference was pre swatch, Omega trended to the lower end of the scale. The dealers would cherry pick them out of the estate boxes and sell them individually.
Then as now the estate boxes contained a mix of pin levers and everyday tool watches. The latter is what I got re-interested in. Specifically the A. Schild movements. Problem with those is that there are 100s if not thousands of house names used with these trademarks comiditized to bulk values. A good example of this is from the film Back to the future. The 1980s seikos are collectable. The 1940s/1950s watches remain cheaper by the dozen. Most films tend to use charity shop props, so I do not see this changing. Still product placement may have an effect.
My passion was chronographs. I was focusing at the end on these and automatics. The prediction then was 'common' watches would not hold value.
Some of the chronos did well. I grabbed what I could without a lot of research at the time. That probably has been the biggest change. 30 years ago I collected as many books and ephemera as I did watches. Now much of that is a few clicks away. This though is an area what may change. Controlling information has become power. That is really the scariest bit. In many ways this is not new. There have been times like the council of Nicaea, or the burning of the library of Alexandra, which changed the course of history.
Look up the history of Sappho. Ironically her writings might be some of the best preserved. Even if they were used tp paper Egyptian bathrooms and her rhetoric laughed at by boys studying Greek.
I predict information will continue to be hidden. A year ago one could download the bestfit catalog. Now a company clawed back the copyright and wants to charge for it. Films I like to watch are not on streaming. Some films and TV episodes are considered so disruptive no one should see them. New versions replace the old. and the younger people pretend the old versions did not exist, or were really bad and not worth the time spent looking at them. Or are considered rude and insulting to a race or creed. When a new Pharoh came along they chiseled the name of the old one off the monuments. In the case of Ceaser, they burred his palace and built a sports arena on it. Which I Ironically has become the very symbol of the excesivness and indolences of his predecessors. These guys get their actions so mixed up it is hard to tell one from another.
Quartz watches were considered disposable. That it was too soon to know how long the electronics would last. I avoided quartz like the plague. Curiously I got some interesting quartz in an estate lot. Another somewhat experimental one with a micro generator did not hold value as the supercap battery takes effort to find and replace. Batteries leak etc. So I do not think quartz will do much different in the future.
The good Quartz watches like Omega and Tag/Heuer seem to retain some value. If one considers 100 bucks value. I like to tend around 35 bucks. Never liked paying more than 200. Now days such are still sold by the pound.
What got me back on the horse was seeing how much a year ago being traded in the 400 to 1200 range. This is now considered low end. Yet when I sat down to see what I might sell, I found not much had really changed.
I also notice not much in the way of women's watches in the predictions. This is over half the population. When I joined a year ago it was implied that 10% here are women. Although I think the number of us who are active can be counted on the fingers.
I have been saying for decades, that I have enough projects for 500 years. (possibly 2000.) I think in the last year I got enough watches for the next 30. Although there is always one more part to get -- or skill to learn.
Parts availability will be the gaming factor. 30 years ago I thought I could program machines to make parts. This is still an ongoing project. The controlling of parts will cause a lot of disruption. A lot of this is done in the name of health, safety and the environment.
Most likely the material houses like OFrie, Borrel, and Esslinger etc. The real estate these warehouses are in are in seedy neighborhoods and the land wanted for more pack and stack housing. The manufactures will tighten grips on distribution leading to more polarization.
I grabbed what spare parts I could when I could. Never the part I need. I spend as much on parts as I do watches. I do not see this changing.
I tend to think of the past as infinitly slow and the future infinitly fast. Why it is so hard to address these topics.
Still the more one looks at the past the more one sees the future.
... and so endith the message today. Go forth now and spread the joy of watch collecting to others.
