Reply With QuoteTLDNR
There has been quite a bit of discussion on the forum about how it is becoming overly dominated by the Rolex brand of watches and particularly about discussions relating to the monetary aspect i.e. current value, future value, effect of sticker/ warranty card removal.
There is also a clear tendency for people who own these watches to respond in a very positive way on these threads, about how great they are, how you can be confident you will make money in the future or at the very least not lose. These threads generate a large amount of such responses. Other threads about watches that are not these forum favourites, or about other aspects of the hobby, quite often die a quick death with few responses.
I really feel this is some sort of self reinforcing behaviour. Some people have bought these watches largely on the back of these monetary aspects, driven by people telling them that is the sensible thing to do and now have a strong incentive to maintain this idea that these watches make money down the line. So this line must be maintained and the watches talked up because they have an eye on when they might be selling in the future. Any criticism however minor must be defended against and rebutted if possible.
Quite often other watches are rubbished in comparison, not because of their comparative qualities as a watch but because they have a record of not holding or making money as time progresses.
Is this what this forum should be about in the main? Most people purport to be watch fanatics on here, interested in watches for their functions, style, beauty etc and the monetary aspect very much a secondary consideration but the forums actual behaviour, seems to suggest otherwise.
Of course mention of value is certainly something that will crop up and rightly so but should it be so dominant on here?
I will give an example in another area that came to mind recently as I sold some of my wine collection last week for the first time in well over thirty years. My daughter got married two weeks ago and I was looking to recover the 30K cost.
Whilst I was searching through my cellar for the wines I had agreed to sell and getting them out for collection, I came across half a dozen or so Carraudes de Lafite Rothschild, that I had not drunk for 15 years or more and had basically forgotten I had. My keeping of my cellar book was never stellar!
Now this is the second wine of Lafite Rothschild, a first growth cru classe claret. Lafite surged in price some years ago, following the Chinese entering the market in a big way and concentrating on the ‘big’ names in claret.
So I suppose I could big this wine up, comment on how it is made by one of the greatest wine makers on the planet, it is immaculately made to the greatest possible standards, a luxury product enjoyed by the few and with superb investment potential. A great quality wine that puts most in the shade
Well I could say that if I had an eye on selling in the future. However, if was to be completely truthful and accurate in my description I would say something more like this……………..
This wine is from the 1987 vintage, a poor one, where even the best houses struggled to make decent wine. This wine is the second wine from Lafite and is clearly not as good as their first wine. At its peak the wine may have struggled to be much above mediocre. The wine is so far down from its peak now, it is almost out of view. It is thin, browned and has lost most of its fruit, If you bought an average £10 bottle from the supermarket you would get a better wine drinking experience.
In a forum about wine I think the second description is how a discussion would go. You kind of imagine in an enthusiasts watch forum the discussion about watches would go the same way
However, let’s talk about this wine in terms of money and not in terms of its intrinsic quality. I probably bought it around 1989, I don’t know for how much but as clearly the overall Bordeaux 1987 vintage was being criticised at that time, then I may have got it for about £10 a bottle or £23 in todays money.
Well here is the chart for the wine and here are the two places that I can find that are selling it currently.
http://www.bordeaux-traders.com/wine...e-lafite-1987/
https://www.wine-searcher.com/find/l...nce/1987/-/-/u
One in the UK is selling for £240 a bottle and one in Hong Kong for £300 a bottle. So, if you had asked me 25 years ago I would have said avoid and would still say that today. However, as a purely monetary, investment thing, it really has done superbly, outperforming some of my wines from the great 1980s vintages.
These bottles have increased 10 fold over inflation or 25 times the original price. As a comparison I have seen a chart which had a new SS Rolex Sub at $2500 in 1989 which is $5700 in todays money, factoring in say four services the watch owes you about $7700.
So the watch is not such a ‘superb’ investment then. If you wanted the same return as for the wine you need to be getting more than $77,000 for it.
This is the trouble with all this talk about money and investment, it not only devalues the forum but some people might get caught out having been drawn into a bubble. I am 99.999% certain there will still be a big wine market in thirty years and still a strong demand for the ‘top’ houses. May even increase as more third world citizens like in India and China increase their disposable income and wine drinking has been in fashion for thousands of years.
However, even with these strong essentials, when the Chinese economy faltered a while ago, there was a reverse in the fine wine market and only in the past year or so has the market passed its previous peaks.
For mechanical watches I am far less sure. Will the market grow? Frankly I doubt it, young people today are far less likely to have a watch than they were forty years ago. The very expensive mechanical watch is an anachronism in todays hi tech world. The market is being held up in the first world by cheap money, easy credit and housing inflation, none of these things will go on indefinitely. When the next ‘crunch’ comes and it will, there will be a sharp shrinking of the market, especially if some people have a more than non significant part of their wealth tied up in luxury mechanical watches and need to realise it quickly.
Perhaps there should be a separate part of the forum where watches are largely talked about and compared in monetary terms. Where people can largely agree that the ‘best’ watches are those which retain the most value. Might make the main forum a more diverse and a less defensive and argumentative place to be as more time is given to the intrinsic merits of a particular watch as a timepiece and piece of Jewellery.
So would this be a good idea, a ‘Watches as an Investment’ place where people can talk to their hearts content about monetary issues and leave Watch Talk to be about other matters and other qualities inherent in particular watches?
Mitch
TLDNR
Mmm. Wine.
Sorry too long I'm afraid.
I did read the first bit. I've noticed lately a few posts saying this forum talks too much about Rolex and monetary values. Maybe, maybe not, but people post about what they want to. Anyone is free to talk about other watches and I'd encourage the people who think there's too much Rolex talk to do just that 😎
Interesting read and fair points but the reason you're starting this thread is obviously on the back of being challenged on the divers thread.
I didn't really think the argument there had anything to do with monetary value but more to do with semantics(as previously stated) on certification.
The points you are making on Rolex and obsession with retained value has been made lots of times but I wouldn't be in favour of a separate section.If its in WT and you don't fancy it then don't read.
Interesting stuff on the wines though.
Why did you buy them if you had no interest in drinking them may I ask?
Is the wine worth more than the watch in your picture.
Originally Posted by Hood
Well that thread is the straw that broke the camels back for sure.
It is not the fact of of the comments but the sheer aggression and defensive attitude that was shown when someone voiced an opinion that a particular GS might actually be just a little bit better than a particular Rolex when being used for diving. The responses came in immediately and from more than one source.
When I just pointed out an undisputed fact about the relative watches dive function, this was first denied, then rubbished, then declared irrelevant anyway.
I detect this behaviour that i comment on here, people are far too invested in the watch as a monetary thing rather than a watch and knowingly or subliminally feel obliged to leap in to protect and preserve the idea that it is great and will deliver value in the future.
On the wine, clearly when I bought a case I did so because it was relatively cheap and I was hoping it would develop favourably, it didn't!
Mitch
Last edited by Mitch; 26th July 2017 at 00:11.
Definitely in monetary terms!Is the wine worth more than the watch in your picture.
Mitch
Never know all the forum abbrev's but I do like puzzles... "too long did not read" perchance?
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What's the ISO rating of the wine?
Not once the wine has been drunk. A watch can be worn, enjoyed and then sold on. Wine can be left in a cellar and then sold, but with none of the enjoyment.
I did put a collection together of 10 single bottles of the world's finest wines, the 5 first growths, Petrus, Le Pin, Yquem, Cheval Blanc and Chateau Ausone. I enjoyed owning them for a while, but ending up selling them to a UK wine merchant as a set. Let's just say it would have been cheaper to buy a Submariner.
If only I could have afforded to drink them...
I have to google most of these. The urban dictionary usually flashes up as the top post and let's me know what these cryptic chaps are on about.
I find it a strange concept that you enjoyed just owning wine.
Well when I started buying 35 years ago I bought with a mind to both drink and collect and that is what I have done over the years.
On the millennium eve I had said to a friend of mine, who is also a bit of a wine buff, that I wanted to drink only 1982 claret on that evening as something to celebrate such a special occasion. He was having a party at his house for quite a few people and I took two cases of 1982 cru classe round.
I sold some of that wine last week to the wine merchant and figured out that if I had taken a couple of cases of chateau plonk around instead and retained the 82's I could have bought a Rolex Daytona with the money.
I agree though, as the wine appreciated in value it become more and more difficult to drink it, my daughters wedding was the catalyst I needed to sell part of it. Feel better for it actually.
Mitch
I know. It's like keeping a watch in a safe with the stick.... no wait
I'll get my coat
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Don't forget that these are largely wines with a 15 to 20 year lead in time before they reach their peak drinking window, so for a very long time enjoy owning is all you can do.
Don't worry, I was working my way through the other 300 or so bottles that I had at the time, so I didn't suffer.
Millennial are we?
"Higher Education Research Institute of new college students since 1966, showed an increase in the proportion of students who consider wealth a very important attribute, from 45% for Baby Boomers (surveyed between 1967 and 1985) to 70% for Gen Xers, and 75% for Millennials."
Mitch
A good friend is seriously into his wine and has one of these Coravin things.
A great invention when you don't want to scoop the full £300 bottle but instead have a civilised glass or two.
A glass or two, is he mad.
Wine should be drunk by the bottle, not by the glass
A man after my own heart.A glass or two, is he mad.
Wine should be drunk by the bottle, not by the glass
Mitch
But if you take out only one bottle, the crate goes all out of balance when you try to put it back on the rack.Wine should be drunk by the bottle, not by the glass
That's why you need to drink the other 5 as well - problem solved.
Well, exactly! You're a man after my own heart.
I was going to put some snarky comment about this being a watch forum, but decided against it.
Indeed, an open bottle is an empty bottle 🍷A glass or two, is he mad.
Wine should be drunk by the bottle, not by the glass
You certainly do like standing on that soap box.
mike
Which one.....
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If you don't finish the bottle how do you know when it is time to go to bed??
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Is that the correct answer?
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GS a better Dive watch than Rolex, hmm OK. Which one has real world records for going the deepest and surviving, twice?
Actual proof, not opinion.
Investment aside, just as a pure written off purchase, what's wrong with people defending a brand they own and have spend serious wedge on?
In the real world, depth records have very little to do with what makes a better dive watch.
There are hundreds of dive watches that are as good as one another for diving, mostly its about personal design preference. The last thing you are going to be thinking about whilst diving is counting the bezel clicks or thinking about the thickness of the crystal.
At these price points its all about what watch you prefer to look at surely?
Investment aside, just as a pure written off purchase, what's wrong with people defending a brand they own and have spend serious wedge on?[/QUOTE]
Nothing. I guess it's when the defence turns into attack of other's favourite brands that it all gets salty. After all THEY spent serious wedge too. So it ends up a bun fight and no one wins.
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TL;DR ;)
The Loser; Diver Rolex?
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*jest btw
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As the best known and therefore most widely desired luxury watch brand, it's pointless to hope interest in Rolex will go away any time soon. For the same reason they are uniquely sellable, and their appeal is inextricably linked to holding their value and calculating that they are value for money, so it's hopeless to expect this not to be mentioned either. In fact, it's quite useful to hear about which watches from any brand are likely to hold their value or increase, not because we think they are an investment platform but because we would all like more watches and it's good to discover there are 'free' ones.
By the same token it's worth pointing out which ones are not free, and may in fact cost even more than the buyers imagine. There have been quite a few threads from optimists asking which current Tudors will follow vintage Snowflake subs and immediately become priceless collectors' items (to which I personally believe the answer is, none of them). It's reasonable to discuss these things, though potentially tedious if it dominates.
The GS vs Rolex arguments will continue for as long as GS owners (and I own a couple) insist on saying, in their enthusiasm, 'It's better than a Rolex!'. This is asking for trouble. You may prefer it, you may even be able to point to some objectively better features, but people on both sides will always want to defend purchases that they've sunk thousands into. It's intolerable to many Rolex owners that something with Seiko on the dial could be better, while it's intolerable to many GS owners that it could be worse. I own both and they are excellent in their own ways. Both brands make some great watches, and also some I wouldn't touch with a barge pole.
I agree that things have become quite Rolex heavy. I probably have seen enough pictures of brand new subs for the time being, but I don't blame the owners for wanting to share their excitement when they realise a long awaited dream. I do miss threads about vintage watches I haven't already seen. When I first got into watches I was fascinated to discover F300s, and early quartz. Now it's become much more about going to a shop and buying the latest shiny thing, but that's life, things go in waves.
I know, TLDR ;-)
Most definitely, looks, brand appeal and all the other intangibles. It really has nothing to do with diving at all. I was just pointing out that (from a tool POV) the Rolex is better and can be proved so, by its unbeaten records so far.
Then again, for diving, most would use a dive computer anyway.
Just pointless, not as if you're defending your wife's honour or suchlike.
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Most dive boats I've been on, the majority of divers use Suunto, scubapro or oceanic dive computers. Hardly anybody uses a dive watch (they wear their watches to the pub, but dive with computers)!
But what SORT of soap box? And which soap manufacturers produce the best boxes? And is the box important, or should you only care about the quality of the soap inside?
My iPhone has a soap box app
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I think Seiko make an ISO420 'certified' soap box.
ISO 684:1974
Analysis of soaps -- Determination of total free alkali
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