Will vintage wrist watches lose value in the next 10, 20, 30 years ?

I hope so!!!!!! I remember the days of Windows 95 when you could pick up a 5513 for £450...

my father purchased a three story factory for £4000.00 in 1968. It is now on the market for 4.5 Million. I have 4K ready for when comes down to the good old day price that my father paid back in 1968. I figure it would make a great buy ... Do you guys thimk it will be a long wait ? 😀

If you have some good watches that you want to sell at the quotations you see on ebay, I'd be more than happy to buy them 😀
Let me know!

So you haven’t read all the sold my $20000 speedmaster 5 years ago for $2500 threads 😗
Or
Bought a Apple Watch that has me here looking for my first real watch.


The amount of watch collectors and pseudo dealers in the last 5 years is mind blowing.
There was a few hundred members 5 years ago here, now heading to 40k. The average age being 25-35.

Gold's outperformed inflation by approximately 600% since 1969. However, for the3, 400? years before that gold was extremely stable. The change from the 60s was that Nixon removed the dollar from a gold value (1971 .. a good year). That allowed gold to be traded independently of government intervention. Since then (in fact, since always) gold has been a hedge against currencies and stocks. It's climbed pretty steadily since 2001 but peaked nine years ago and we're still 30% down on the 2011 price.

Point that I'm making is nothing is simple. If you'd bought gold in 1600, its value would be roughly the same now after being adjusted for inflation. That said, I like gold. I can sell it in a matter of days and it's pretty impervious to the idiocracies that keep popping up around the globe. It's not going to make money for me but the point is that it won't lose it either.

As for watches ... the market as a whole is going to lose money. That said, there are certain watches that will always be worth a reasonable, if not substantial, sums. Will Paul Newman's Daytona (or sub or datejust or whatever someone thought they saw him wear once) still be worth tens of millions in a hundred years' time when no-one can really recall Paul Newman? Will Longines or Certina or ... Sicura (now there's a good one to throw in!) lose value when the wrist watch goes out of fashion? Will Patek and Vacheron, Audmars and Rolex, always command a premium? Vacheron is a case in point already - I prefer vintage Vacheron to Patek (I'm talking dress watch here) but the VC can be picked up relatively cheaply still. The Patek always commands more.

I've said this many times before: the resale market for watches is like the car market was 30 years ago. People want to move money into appreciating assets and that drives prices up. As the more desirable watches move out of the financial reach of the average collector, that collector moves his focus to other "interesting" pieces. In turn, the prices for those watches increases driven in no small part by internet fora and social media. However, it won't take much of a drop in interest for those "lesser" brands to lose value. Meanwhile, the Ferraris of the watch world will continue to command eye-watering prices. Which are going to be the watch-Ferrari? Well, that's entirely down to perceived value by the market. By you.

If you want to cull your collection down to a more manageable number and a requirement is to retain/increase value, keep only the best quality examples and get rid of the rest. If global interest in watches goes backwards somewhere in the next 10-20-30 years top quality examples will be the ones most likely to remain in demand. The OP makes a good point about stamps - agree, my family’s experience was the same.

Looking at it from a hobby perspective, I would argue that vintage watches are different from other collectibles (stamps, coins, baseball cards and so on) because they have basic utility and can also be enjoyed out in the world in this social media age. Therefore, in addition to the typical male collecting nerd, some practical professional types and fashionistas also get sucked in. This makes for a larger, more robust market overall, and with the middle class expanding globally and the supply of good vintage watches perhaps falling as collectors ‘buy and hold’, the price pressure on good pieces surely points north for the next two decades at least.

If we are talking about UG specifically, I think the recent price spike means that if you bought in at very low levels now might be a good time to throw a few out (especially if you are sitting on 50+ pieces @rolokr ). You’ve had a good run!

Only 50 watches 🙄

https://omegaforums.net/threads/some-constellation-love.57842/



https://omegaforums.net/threads/the-seamasters-have-demanded-their-day-in-the-sun.57906/

That's the only thing I'm worried about. I wear all of my watches and (at least currently) have no inclination to sell any of them, so I basically consider them written off. I keep ketailed information on all of them though, including purchase prices and valuations, so I hope my family will at least have an idea of what they've got.

There’s a market for watches now and if I had a valuable collection I’d probably sell and just buy some cheaper models. I’ve been collecting 1930s design for years. A few years back I sold all my top end pieces. Prices were crazy. Now no one wants it. They’ve moved on to new areas and these are items that were virtually one offs so much rarer than any watch. There are millions of watches out there so it’s inevitable there will be some sort of depreciation. Besides all these Millennial kids don’t collect and have no money. If you want them to have anything, just walk down to their basement bedroom and give it to them. The bottom line is just buy watches because you like them

@GuiltyBoomerang please lend your crystal ball to @Reddy_Kilowatt, his isn't working.

My 14 year old daughter tells me that she'll never wear a watch just because shes so sick of me talking about / showing here watches!

There are (seemingly) hundreds of threads on this exact topic, which I suppose is natural as prices have risen at a fast pace in recent years and what was previously just a hobby has turned into collections worth six-figure (and sometimes seven-figure) aggregate valuations. It's natural to wring hands about the future and wonder about taking "chips off the table" if you're in this situation, and I wouldn't fault anyone for doing so. I notice more people my age (I'm 31) entering the hobby than ever before and the wristwatch has been one of the few staples of a gentleman's wardrobe / style since its introduction, so I don't see the doom and gloom that older members often fall back on.

I'd say most importantly, if you're not having fun with it anymore, stop doing it. If you are, then just enjoy it!

EBay is a huge site with massive search problems. Watches put there are often not seen by many collectors. Even those looking for that watch or that type of watch. And that's assuming the seller got all his listing criteria right.

They employ scores of people just to try to figure out why their search function doesn't work properly.

Even worse, people try to draw some conclusion while searching or deciding whether to bid from the number of bids on the past article. But more important is how much shill bidding is going on: You CAN check that by looking at the bids on the item and trying to figure out from the numbers of low-feedback ebayers you see there whether the owner is himself bidding on his items through his own (newly created?) alter personas.

For these reason lots of watches (etc) VERY OFTEN dont get seen and very often sell there for pittances. Especially if the seller gets nervous and insists on selling immediately.

You can draw NO assumption about the state of the watch market from some individual sale you saw on ebay! Much less the state of the future (investment) market.