Rolex Vintage Collection

[LeOnfromtheblock]

No doubt there is a market for modern ceramic sports models that are coming out of Rolex but what about lovers of a more vintage style of watch?

I'll take you back to approximately the early 80's Japan where there was a huge interest/boom in vintage denim, Levis in particular (Levi's were the first to patent the hidden rivet blue jean). Levi's had years prior, stopped using the more costly selvage denim, spun on ancient shuttle looms and changed to a faster production time, more cost effective denim spun on newer technology. The result was that the quality suffered which forced denim purists to start collecting and trading the already established higher quality vintage models. Some time after, a few Japanese tailors decided to buy the old shuttle looms Levis stopped using many years earlier and start producing their own denim. They began to recreate historical Levi's models based on deadstock/new oldstock they had collected. The jeans that started coming out of Japan were extremely accurate to the original Levi's models which they were paying homage to and these jeans began gaining massive popularity. People were getting vintage denim and models with the added bonus of wearing them as new.

Levis naturally came in and sued everyone and many reproduction companies were forced to make changes. However what Levi's noticed was that there was definitely a market for this type of denim and so they went back into their documented history and came out with LVC (Levi's Vintage Clothing). Models started coming out based on the early 1870's cuts right through to the 1970's. And these models were being constructed with the same materials and same machinery according to how they were originally produced decades and even a century earlier.

LVC was/is a success and their success has got me thinking why cant Rolex do something along these lines? There are so many Vintage collectors out there and so many like me wishing they could have a 6538 or 1665 DRSD but just cant afford the ever rising price tags. How good would it be if Rolex still had all their old molds and what not and started bring out their own vintage homages of their early history. Having not only the chance to wear one of their earliest subs at an affordable price but to own it as new. See the thing at the moment is I cant see Rolex making any money out of the vintage pie. It's all the dealers and collectors.

The other thing to note is that LVC has not decreased the value of any original vintage Levi's jeans at all. I think the oldest known pair is in Levi's vault and values at rough $170K. I would imagine it would be the same for the original Rolex subs and whatnot.