The Watch Appreciation Thread - Part two (Rolex, Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet, Jaeger LeCoultre,

[Thrift Vader]

If that is a real double Red Sea-Dweller, why doesn't the seller take a trip to Europe or the US? He can sell it in a heartbeat if its real. The amount he would get would more than cover his travel, hotel, and still make a large profit.
If the scratches are a big issue in Japan, why doesn't he send it to Rolex of Japan for an overhaul and have them polish it? Sure people who value originality might be a bit put off that it has been polished, but wouldn't it open a much larger audience of buyers to that watch if it weren't all scratched?

How did "Your guy" get a Patek that he was selling for $100? Did someone sell it to "Your guy" for $25? Come on, a real Patek? How much hands on exposure do you have with Pateks? I've even seen a few second hand stores accidentally take in a fake watch. Sorry, I have to doubt its authenticity, unless it was an old small size steel Calatrava (and the case couldn't be sold for the value of the gold) watch that had the crown open, someone went swimming with it, allowed the water to get in, then closed the crown to keep the water inside, ruining the dial and turning the movement into a hunk of rust that wouldn't work.

It was the father of a former sportsman, who lost it all. -Divorce. "My Guy" (The father) had no idea.
if it makes you feel better, I told him what it was. and why i didn't buy it.

The watch i bought was engraved with his name. and was verified as real. value decreased by the engraving. his collection was extensive. but dated.

 

[mak1277]

Is the double red sea dweller still available?

Look, I believe that "barn finds" are still possible, although much less likely than pre-internet. But still possible.

However, I don't believe a real double red sea dweller would sit unsold at $5k for more than a day? week? Certainly within a week some collector would find it and buy it. So if it's still available then that is proof enough for me that it's fake.

 

[an draoi]

Assuming that the company is capable of implementing it correctly (big if), it is perfectly technically possible to store (and display) the information that X currently belongs to A without disclosing anything about A (beyond their ownership of X).

I don't doubt it's technically possible. (Hell, it seems you can do anything with blockchain these days.) But what's in it for the watch company? Even if they succeed in reassuring owners that there are no security issues like those described by @Journeyman, what benefit do they get from operating this database? Perhaps it makes the watches a little easier to resell and maybe this pushes up the resale value a little bit and conceivably by offering this service the company encourages a few buyers to choose their brand over another? Seems a bit tenuous. Perhaps there are some advantages I'm missing, but would they outweigh the cost of maintaining the list plus the potential liability for the watch company if they make a mistake, get hacked etc?

 

[Ambulance Chaser]

"Buy the seller, not the watch." "If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is." Follow those two rules when buying watches and you should be okay.

 

[Dino944]

It was the father of a former sportsman, who lost it all. -Divorce. "My Guy" had no idea.
if it makes you feel better, I told him what it was. and why i didn't buy it.

The watch i bought was engraved with his name. and was verified as real. value decreased by the engraving. his collection was extensive. but dated.

If "Your guy" didn't know what it was and had to be told what is is by a person who doesn't have that much experience with Rolex or Pateks, then I have even less faith that the Rolex or Patek are/were authentic. Also, the idea that the guy lost it all in a divorce...sure that can happen. However, the idea is sell your items for as much as possible...not for as little as possible to a guy who doesn't know what the items are, or what they are worth. Generally, people liquidate assets to pay debts or to create an equal division of assets...so it makes little sense to sell items for a fraction of their market value. Unless the seller is looking for someone less knowledgeable to dupe...which could be your guy.

 

[am55]

I don't doubt it's technically possible. (Hell, it seems you can do anything with blockchain these days.) But what's in it for the watch company? Even if they succeed in reassuring owners that there are no security issues like those described by @Journeyman, what benefit do they get from operating this database? Perhaps it makes the watches a little easier to resell and maybe this pushes up the resale value a little bit and conceivably by offering this service the company encourages a few buyers to choose their brand over another? Seems a bit tenuous. Perhaps there are some advantages I'm missing, but would they outweigh the cost of maintaining the list plus the potential liability for the watch company if they make a mistake, get hacked etc?

The value is authenticity, which as we can see from this thread and the huge cost difference between genuine, Franken and full replica watches is very much something customers want*. Today, people will happily endure untold amounts of pain (multi-month waitlists, brax running into every airport shop, discussions of what pigeon dance to perform to maximise one's chances, etc.) just to be able to buy new, from an official retail location with official papers, further indicating how much they value authenticity itself.

As we iterate towards perfect copies, we iterate towards the authenticity being the entire value proposition of a real watch vs. a replica. Chances are "keyed" watches would see a similar lift in value as those with good papers do today.

Blockchain is a public ledger, not one maintained by a central authority. Cryptography and distributed systems are orthogonal, although associated in public consciousness by the recent [...]coin bubble. Whilst a physical key exchange was an issue for Snowden and Poitras' initial communication, the large network of official retail locations gives a big edge to Rolex in that respect.

The cost of designing and maintaining such a system could be quite cheap provided the company hire a moderately competent, experienced and up to date contractor and not someone selling blockchain on Hadoop as a service in the IoT cloud (I'm looking at you, art world).

* This assumes that replicas are approaching the real thing convincingly.

 

[Thrift Vader]

If "Your guy" didn't know what it was and had to be told what is is by a person who doesn't have that much experience with Rolex or Pateks, then I have even less faith that the Rolex or Patek are/were authentic. Also, the idea that the guy lost it all in a divorce...sure that can happen. However, the idea is sell your items for as much as possible...not for as little as possible to a guy who doesn't know what the items are, or what they are worth. Generally, people liquidate assets to pay debts or to create an equal division of assets...so it makes little sense to sell items for a fraction of their market value. Unless the seller is looking for someone less knowledgeable to dupe...which could be your guy.

naw, this one was tragic.

and the father knew his son collected watches. hitting me up is perhaps not the best move. but if it helped him with the patek? no problem.

 

[an draoi]

The value is authenticity, which as we can see from this thread and the huge cost difference between genuine, Franken and full replica watches is very much something customers want*. Today, people will happily endure untold amounts of pain (multi-month waitlists, brax running into every airport shop, discussions of what pigeon dance to perform to maximise one's chances, etc.) just to be able to buy new, from an official retail location with official papers, further indicating how much they value authenticity itself.

As we iterate towards perfect copies, we iterate towards the authenticity being the entire value proposition of a real watch vs. a replica. Chances are "keyed" watches would see a similar lift in value as those with good papers do today.

Blockchain is a public ledger, not one maintained by a central authority. Cryptography and distributed systems are orthogonal, although associated in public consciousness by the recent [...]coin bubble. Whilst a physical key exchange was an issue for Snowden and Poitras' initial communication, the large network of official retail locations gives a big edge to Rolex in that respect.

The cost of designing and maintaining such a system could be quite cheap provided the company hire a moderately competent, experienced and up to date contractor and not someone selling blockchain on Hadoop as a service in the IoT cloud (I'm looking at you, art world).

* This assumes that replicas are approaching the real thing convincingly.

Yeah, I get all this.

And I understand the difference between a blockchain ledger and a privately maintained database that (if I have understood correctly) you are advocating.

My question remains this: what's in it for the company?

 

[Scuppers]

Not much in it for the consumer with this attitude...

 

[Dino944]

naw, this one was tragic.

and the father knew his son collected watches. hitting me up is perhaps not the best move. but if it helped him with the patek? no problem.

Anyone can collect watches but there is a big difference between collecting replicas and the real deal.

$100 Pateks, $5K Double Red SDs and the guy buying and selling them has to be told by you (someone with little to no Patek/Rolex experience) what he is buying? And you believe what the guy is selling is real because he told you a story? Seems really questionable at best.

 

[an draoi]

SCENE: The boardroom of Schweiz Montres S.A.

CEO: (to SM Exec A) Also, vot is ze latest on ze idiot list?

SM Exec A: You mean the customer-owner database?

CEO: (strokes cat) Ja ja, zis.

SM Exec A: It has surpassed all expectations. Running costs are minimal, we have had no reported data breaches and customer feedback is overwhelmingly positive.

CEO: Ze idiots like it?

SM Exec A: Oh yes. They love the ability to prove and verify both the authenticity and ownership of their watches. And secondary sales of our watches have continued to increase month on month.

CEO: Zis is sehr gut, Dave. Zer are bright things in your future. (To SM Exec B) Und du - please now ze update on ze quarterly sales.

SM Exec B: Less encouraging, I'm afraid. Sales are down again, our waitlists are shortening and none of our ADs has reported a Brax sighting in months. And we just can't figure out why.

CEO: Zis is unacceptable, Geoff! Bad Geoff! No bonus for du!

[Exit Geoff, pursued by a cat.]

SCENE

 

[cchen]

 

[LA Guy]

Statistically, there are nearly surely deals to be had. A lot of them are likely passed over because they are just super risky bets. However, this particular watch, if it is real, is a bad bet for nearly all buyers. A potential 10x return on a 1 in a thousand bet is an astounding poor bet to make.

On the seller's side, and let's assume for a moment that you have an authentic item, it makes a bit more sense to sell to a well respected dealer, but a lot of people just don't know what they are sitting on, and if they have a small clue, it's a risk to talk to a vintage dealer with a lot more knowledge. I mean, I had no idea that this old Daytona could be something like $20K until maybe a year and a half ago, at earliest. I thought, maybe $8-10K? And I am a huge nerd in a watch adjacent field. If you don't know, you don't know. We (Styleforum team) taped a podcast with experts on vintage, and it really is about being able to take advantage of arbritrage. I expect that the vintage watch market is analogous.

Apropos of nothing, a visit to a half dozen or so vintage dealers in Florence and Rome in January showed me that prices easily varied for vintage Rolexes, Omegas, and Heuers, easily by 25%, and that was within a city. And some highly recommended dealers had very dubiously high prices for watches that, to me, looked quite poorly redialed.

 

[LA Guy]

"Buy the seller, not the watch." "If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is." Follow those two rules when buying watches and you should be okay.

This is correct for the end consumer, like us, but not for knowledgeable dealers/resellers. There is no money in that. I've gone down the rabbit hole a few times now, buying the watch rather than the buyer, and being rewarded, but it's for fairly low stakes, not super in demand, nor newer watches, but I wouldn't even try to do that for Rolexes without a LOT more knowledge.

 

[LA Guy]

Oh, I should have a watch coming next week, so I promise some pictures then.