Watch flippers are clumsy and neurotic

[Valedictorian]

I honestly pity the folks that buy watches solely for speculative purposes. They hop on the bandwagon by all flocking towards the same 20-25 pieces, and in the process artificially increasing the prices of not only those, but pretty much every watch that could be an alternative. Prices of some references are so high nowadays that well-willing owners either have to hide them under their sleeve for fear of being mugged or have no other option than to keep them in a vault because you can’t possibly enjoy a watch that is nearing the value of small (or, depending on country, even big) real estate.

Meanwhile, those flippers are so clumsy: they anticipate a watch to be discontinued and therefore pay a ridiculous premium about 2-3 months ahead of April of each year, then attempt to dump them at unprecedented prices if indeed discontinued (of course, many of them can’t dispose of the watch because everyone else is trying the same thing at the exact same time) or, if discontinuation was fake news, neurotically seek to either trade up/down, hold on to it, or accept a financial loss along with incurring a dent in their ego thanks to their ‘genius plan’ and end up listing the watch for sale. Some of those listings are bumped up endlessly but no one bites.

The result of this clumsiness is that mass-produced Submariners are now consistently at 40% premium or more, and more refined (read: fragile) steel sports watches easily exceed a 250% premium. There’s even a quartz one that markets for around $90k now - a watch that won’t properly work after two or three decades, so you can’t pass them on to your kids, unless you like bad dad-jokes.

When you ask a flipper what the justification is of his ludicrous asking price, he points to Chrono24 as the benchmark - a place where many watches are most likely not in stock and/or inflated by at least 20% to accommodate for fees, ignorance, greed, and the negotiation buffer (noblesse oblige). I’m being very conservative with this 20% estimate as I’ve seen recent releases that are generally unwanted by your average WIS with a 250% mark-up.

Most vintage watches don’t have box nor papers anymore because people back then actually bought the watch for enjoyment and couldn’t care less about market value. Kudos to those here that are in that camp. I know many of you are.