I have been moving away from vintage watches that are being speculated by the auction houses or dealers for a while. In particular, the Rolex sports watches have been so speculated that prices have started to fall especially for the auction led. Together with the economic uncertainties, many buyers who have paid premium prices will have to hang on with the watches until prices recover. With the increasing number of mixed parts have made verification of authenticity tough. Unlike Patek who will issue archives for their watches, Rolex do not offer such services. One way is to get a Rolex service paper. However, Rolex do not care about whether the dial is type 1 or type 5 as these classifications were done by collectors and not Rolex. We have to remember that during the 1960-70s, Rolex like any Swiss watch companies, faced the challenge from the Japanese watches. Moreover, dials manufacturing were often outsourced to different companies and variations will therefore happened.
I was lucky as many of my vinatge sports watches were bought before the hype and prices were very reasonable. Whenever possible, I have sent most of my vintage sports models to Rolex center for service and change of parts, as give it another few more years, the spare parts for the 1960-70 watches will be depleted. Many collectors do not have to send their Rolex centers as they prefer to keep them in original conditions. However, mechanical watches like cars needs servicing. As such those ghost bezels, damaged spider dial, faded dials if continues to deteriorate, will definitely undermined the values..
Since vintage watch collecting is one of our hobbies, we should expand our horizon beyond the Rolex Sports watches...right??
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