Keep Calm And Continue Collecting: Advice For An Up-And-Down Watch Market – Reprise

Now, it seems fairly evident that we are on the down slope of either a cyclical correction in prices or, if one takes a less optimistic view, a permanent loss of watch value as the mechanical timepiece industry faces a variety of challenges and potential disruptions So what's a collector to do? And what lessons can we draw, both from recent watch auction results and the history of other luxury categories, to guide us? As we are seeing in the watch market, even within a brand like Ferrari not all models are equal Over the past several years, it's been hard to keep up with the pace of the watch industry's introductions of highly complicated - and highly expensive - watches.

Faced with disruption from outside and below as well as softening markets in Asia and elsewhere, the watch industry is today at significant risk The new watches currently coming to market are the products of years of prosperity and escalating expectations, so I'm not expecting an industry about-face as soon as SIHH and Baselworld 2016 Our friend William Massena noted in a recent interview on Hodinkee that the Swiss watch industry has been most creative in times of trouble; now seems the time to demand brilliance within tight confines of cost and re-use of existing components. Source