Money from old wrists

By Ken Kessler

Not all my financial decisions have been impeccable, but I did make one very sound call. I bought vintage watches before the current craze commenced. Given my too-small pension, the increases in value are reassuring: $500 paid for an early Rolex Explorer 20 years ago has turned into something like $7,000 today; ditto for the same spent on a 1952 IWC Mk 11.

The rebirth of the mechanical wristwatch in the late 1980s has created a mature collector’s culture. If you accept the arbitrary definition of a “vintage watch” as one that’s over 25 years old, then the earliest examples of the “new wave” mechanical wristwatches are now soaked in the desirability and gravitas of age. By contrast, watches less than a quarter of a century old are referred to, sniffily, by the trade as “pre-owned”. The $1.4m paid in May 2015 for an ultra-rare 1971 Rolex Daytona once owned by Eric Clapton represented a new benchmark.