“The majority of watch auction trends where something suddenly goes up in value and diminishes in availability is not due to new value being discovered.”
I’m not trying to pop any bubbles here, but when it comes down to it, the majority of watch auction trends where something suddenly goes up in value and diminishes in availability is not due to new value being discovered. It happens because one or a few watch collectors with lots of cash to burn living in some major city around the world got bored of the last hard-to-get thing they purchased and moved on to the next thing that caught their eye. In markets today, where people are hungry as well, you bet there are going to be people trying to jump on those decisions and trying to profit from them.
I’m never particularly shy about speaking sarcastically about watch auctions because I think the politics and egos behind them are a huge turnoff. That’s a shame because there is some amazing stuff being sold at watch auctions all around the world every year. When I was in Hong Kong recently, I saw loads of new and pre-owned stuff available for auction, and seeing it makes you feel like a kid in a candy store (where all the candy costs more than your car). If you have the dough, you can walk away with super cool watches, both modern and vintage, each couple of weeks and live a very happy life as a collector. The problem is that the watch auction market has too much inventory because all the unsold watches in the world end up at auctions as though they were “estate goods” or something. No, the watch auction world has really become an extension of the gray-market and pre-owned world. Watch auctions are a very slick and expensive way to sell unwanted timepieces.
“Watch auctions (…) should be brought back to being proprietors of rare and actually interesting goods that you aren’t likely to find available anywhere else.”
Sure, once in a while, you have some super rare stuff, but most of those items which exist in the “exotic vintage watch world” just recirculates itself among the elite. These guys just bat these watches around like cats batting around toys. Once in a while, something “new” is discovered in a forgotten safe or box, but you can’t be the actual finder of that stuff. It just isn’t worth the effort of maybe finding one. So watch auctions are oversaturated, bloated with activity which should really be stopped by not having so many damned unsold watches around the world, and brought back to being proprietors of rare and actually interesting goods that you aren’t likely to find available anywhere else.
Was that a big enough tangent for you? I don’t mean to write articles within articles, but sometimes I get in a mental state where I am thinking about a topic and need to articulate because you are the same audience I would be bringing these points up with eventually. I speak so negatively about watch auctions in this context because I think they do a disservice to the social watch collectors (the other category). These people are looking to be led a bit and want opinion leaders. Yes, they make their own decisions, but they also allow other people to narrow those decisions down quite a bit. This class of watch lovers often follow auctions very carefully because auctions are apparently places where subjective watch collectors hang out, and you can see what they are buying. See how convenient that is? Where else would you so efficiently see these guys hanging out and making decisions? Literally nowhere, unless you had CIA-level access to eBay.
OK, more on auctions for a moment. You know those pictures or videos you see of really busy auction rooms? “Live from Geneva, some hotel is packed with people to see some rare steel Pateks being sold.” Yeah, it is like that. Most of the people there are audience members. Even if they register for the auction, they never bid. That isn’t what they are there for. They are present to see in person the very few members of that group which are actually buying stuff. These are other collectors or even media or other interested parties. You can bet your ass the watch brands also have representation there. So when you get impressed by the huge numbers of people at these events, just remember that a small percentage of them ever even make a serious bid.
In the above example, a large number of social watch collectors and those who report to them are there to observe the behavior of the subjective collectors who simply make decisions because of what they subjectively like. They really don’t care what their friends think about what they are wearing. Sure, they want others to be impressed with their efforts, but at the end of the day, as long as they like it and can afford it, they sleep well.
“Being more self-aware will make you more confident as a buyer and allow you to enjoy this passion we all share together more.”
When social watch collectors follow the subjective ones, I don’t really think most of them know that they are doing it. That is actually why I started this article with the question “are you being influenced as a watch collector?” People need to honestly answer that question before being able to classify themselves as one or the other. Being more self-aware will make you more confident as a buyer and allow you to enjoy this passion we all share together more. It is easy to idolize the subjective watch collectors because they really keep the activity going in tandem with the people supplying the stuff we like. With that said, you either are one or you aren’t one, and there is probably much more actual satisfaction for the social watch collector because they get more pleasure out of getting the stuff they have been hunting for. Subjective watch collectors keep on collecting because the perfection or ideal they are looking for really doesn’t exist. It is the holy grail and, by nature, is not defined by the end of the quest, but the journey you took along the way.