Just an observation from long term member
I guess it is inevitable, but when I first joined this forum most of the discussion on 'Watch Talk' was about watches. These days talk is more about toward using watches as some sort of investment vehicle. And also SC was an adjunct to the forum and I have seen a few times when Eddie was more vocal on the site (before the watershed when the site nearly was sold to a third party with the wholehearted outcry from the membership - remeber that?) that SC would be shutdown to keep the spirit off the forum,
I do remember a few times when SC was actually taken down to keep us focused on the main purpose of the forum - which seems to get less noticed these days:
"A friendly place to discuss watches". (Paraphrase)
Also - we used to sell watches at knocked down prices to each other - not to "get back what I paid for", approach or "a dealer will offer me this to you have to pay the same". I realise no one wants to lose money these days - but just saying attitudes have changed.
And this incessant concentration on one Brand seems to be over coming these days. Which is a shame as there are so many to talk about and discuss.
Technical discussion of watches is a rare but pleasant topic, I'm sure there were more in the past
Anyway - soap box dismounted
Back inside my shell
Martyn
Just an observation from long term member
I think there is nothing wrong with discussing Rolex. Not every rolex discussion is about money. Rolex watches are just extremely good watches. It outperforms so many other brands on so many levels, even things like movement durability, accuracy, robustness, then after service to name a few. The added bonus is then the value retention. But you cannot categorise every discussion of rolex purely motivated by money. The watch themselves are really good. Simple as that.
Also on SC, sellers put "WF offered me X" and i actually think that is a good thing. Why? firstly we all know dealers will
offer you knock down prices as they need to make money also, typically 50-60% of the retail price. Many times that is far below what you would get in a private sale we all know this. This isn't true just for watches, things like cars too, if you sell privately you get more. This has never changed. Simple economics. WF has been quoted many times simply because WF has grown as a comoany and it provides a benchmark for many people. By putting a dealer price on it people can have more piece of mind as to what the "floor" price is but also buy a watch far cheaper than they ever could and i think that is still very much in the forum spirit. Sure there has been a few posts making profits and all that but that is the minority.
Also someone mentioned FX rates and this has had a massive impact on watch prices. Again nothing anyone can do about this and for sure is not about greed or not in the spirit of the forum. The GBp has devalued so much but watches are priced globally, namely first in Swiss francs. It's then normal that watches remain "hedged" in many ways.If GBP takes a 30% hit it's then inevitable that a watch that used to cost £3000, now has to be sold 30% more. In reality that's just FX adjustment and nktnprofits "theoretically" speaking.
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Just an observation from long term member
As another longstanding member, I actually agree with some of what Martyn said and some of what snowman said.
I do think there is more focus now on Rolex than there used to be, and I too simply move past many (but not all) of those threads as they are often somewhat repetitive. To put some context around this point, when I read Martyn's original post, 8 of the first 14 threads on WT were about Rolex - that seems to me rather excessive.
I also agree that there has been an increase on the attention paid to residual values.
Having said all that I still believe this forum is a great place to be, it still throws up great topics of debate and the vast majority of members are good-hearted. Of course there are a few aggressive idiots about, but most of them don't last long and there were similar types in evidence 12 years ago.
Oh, and I too miss the acerbic humour of our patron - Eddie's posts have always been good value [emoji12].
Simon
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Just an observation from long term member
There has been a lot of change in the last 7 years I have been here. There used to be much wider brand discussion, now there is hardly any discussion of Timefactors products, accessibly priced watches, Sinn etc. As much as I like Rolex, the discussions are far too dominant and often revolve around waiting lists and profit. This is clearly driven by the current supply demand imbalance, but it would be nice to be back on a more sustainable footing. Patek sports used to be hardly mentioned, now they have a constant presence. I suspect that if they weren't the asset that they are, partly supply/demand driven, the interest might not be so great.
It would be nice to have the variety back, and some more movement discussions, particularly for newer members.
I still like hanging out here though, and the self regulation, particularly of SC is quite an attribute
Dave
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