I guess there’s a negative halo from the current state of the brand, which I would describe as “Fifty Fathoms and other stuff”. It’s not quite as extreme as modern Movado depressing vintage Movado. But you could imagine Biver-era Blancpain being grail-like objects if modern Blancpain was in better shape.
It’s also not that easy to collect. I like neovintage Blancpain a lot, and have a couple references that I’m actively looking for. But I’ve been looking for a while.
Production volumes weren’t high in aggregate, and if you’re looking for a particular reference - good luck. Even if one comes up, it might be priced wrong because there aren’t that many precedent transactions (you’ll often see these sit for 6-12+ months).
Finally, a lot of the watches were 34mm. Which is impressive from an engineering standpoint! But a little small for my tastes, even on my tiny wrists.
agreed on all points, to put just one number to your third point: Estimates put the QP chrono 5395 at ~400 pieces. there are about 4k Patek 3970s! 400 is hardly enough for a real market to form.
Ben at Watch Brothers has mentioned original 90s retail prices in some of his articles, and they're typically near or approaching Patek prices, I can imagine it would've been a tough sell to get anyone to buy a Blancpain for the same price as a PP!
Oh, 100%. It does make you wonder what could have been. Biver was right there, doing all the right things. You could argue that, at the time, Blancpain was even more innovative that Patek (which was a little slower to re-emerge post quartz crisis). Could have evolved into a Lange or Patek like manufacturer. And then Blancpain was just neglected post Biver…
Yeah, the historical retail prices are fascinating - and not just for Blancpain. You can find so many watches from the 90s / 2000s trading at 20-30% of original retail (before adjusting for inflation!). For instance, tourbillon prices fell off in particular as the complication became easier to produce.
Aimless men... My wife and I often share examples supporting the unraveling of civil fabric ... the Swatch mess was a recent share (so many other examples, Ryan Air CEO recently mentioned one flight is grounded per day regarding behavior versus one flight per week ten years ago... interestingly, he recommended stopping sale of alcohol so early in the morning in airports).
I looked at a Blancpain Villeret complete calendar once but it did feel a little small. Although it wasn’t one of these high complications so maybe not a fair comparison
I owned an 1185 chrono for a while. I actually really liked the simplicity of it, and the roman numerals were some of the few I have found tolerable on a watch. It's a wonderful little gold nugget. But man is it small. I have no problems with a 34mm watch but it wore so tiny on my wrist which, granted, is over 7", but still. I think one on a bracelet would work better and still think about that, but it's pretty far from the top of my list. Seems like enough people know this now that the market probably will continue to be middling, except for the really cool unique ones you mention. Everyone's busy pumping Lange now anyway...
oh wow that hayek interview was something else. no remorse, instead he deflects all blame. no empathy even for his own store employees, let alone the mall-staff or the police.
but this is not yet rock-bottom for swatch-group. there will be more atrocities coming from them, as they fight for their survival in the coming years. they’ve already shown they have no limits, legal (speedy auction fraud) or moral.
I’ve never completely understood the Blancpain Market Malaise. I’m the proud owner of a FF 50th Anniversary (hard to believe it’s now 23 years old!) that I bought several years ago along with several other FF variants (all bought used to avoid Blancpain’s dreadful initial value hit). They are all fantastic watch’s and I like wearing them. Will they ever increase in value? Who knows?
All of this said, it reminds me of the early 2000’s in the wine world when I was buying loads of Burgundy from the likes of Roumier, Mugnier, DRC, Mugngeret-Gibourg, etc., etc. All of my wine collecting friends were buying Bordeaux, California Cults, etc. and they thought I was crazy, but I LOVED Burgundy, enjoyed drinking it and was not particularly fond of Cab-based wines…so I continued to buy what I liked.
Of course there are thousands of cases of Bordeaux produced by the “collectible” Chateaux each year (think Patek as per the example above), but only hundreds of cases of the best Burgundies, so it never made sense to me why they traded for LESS money than the Bordeaux. We all now know what happened…Burgundy prices skyrocketed and Bordeaux flat lined or declined.
I’m not saying Blancpain is DRC to Patek’s Latour, BUT over time when things are beautiful, exceptionally well made and fairly priced (relative to alternatives), the market eventually takes notice. If I was a betting man, this will happen someday with Blancpain…
I guess there’s a negative halo from the current state of the brand, which I would describe as “Fifty Fathoms and other stuff”. It’s not quite as extreme as modern Movado depressing vintage Movado. But you could imagine Biver-era Blancpain being grail-like objects if modern Blancpain was in better shape.
It’s also not that easy to collect. I like neovintage Blancpain a lot, and have a couple references that I’m actively looking for. But I’ve been looking for a while.
Production volumes weren’t high in aggregate, and if you’re looking for a particular reference - good luck. Even if one comes up, it might be priced wrong because there aren’t that many precedent transactions (you’ll often see these sit for 6-12+ months).
Finally, a lot of the watches were 34mm. Which is impressive from an engineering standpoint! But a little small for my tastes, even on my tiny wrists.
agreed on all points, to put just one number to your third point: Estimates put the QP chrono 5395 at ~400 pieces. there are about 4k Patek 3970s! 400 is hardly enough for a real market to form.
Ben at Watch Brothers has mentioned original 90s retail prices in some of his articles, and they're typically near or approaching Patek prices, I can imagine it would've been a tough sell to get anyone to buy a Blancpain for the same price as a PP!
Oh, 100%. It does make you wonder what could have been. Biver was right there, doing all the right things. You could argue that, at the time, Blancpain was even more innovative that Patek (which was a little slower to re-emerge post quartz crisis). Could have evolved into a Lange or Patek like manufacturer. And then Blancpain was just neglected post Biver…
Yeah, the historical retail prices are fascinating - and not just for Blancpain. You can find so many watches from the 90s / 2000s trading at 20-30% of original retail (before adjusting for inflation!). For instance, tourbillon prices fell off in particular as the complication became easier to produce.
Aimless men... My wife and I often share examples supporting the unraveling of civil fabric ... the Swatch mess was a recent share (so many other examples, Ryan Air CEO recently mentioned one flight is grounded per day regarding behavior versus one flight per week ten years ago... interestingly, he recommended stopping sale of alcohol so early in the morning in airports).
The short lugs and 34 will always limit these to a purist’s crowd, but hey, I’m not complaining
I looked at a Blancpain Villeret complete calendar once but it did feel a little small. Although it wasn’t one of these high complications so maybe not a fair comparison
I remember when an 80’s AP perpetual calendar was $10K, then Wei Koh wrote an article for Revolution and then all of a sudden they were 20K
I owned an 1185 chrono for a while. I actually really liked the simplicity of it, and the roman numerals were some of the few I have found tolerable on a watch. It's a wonderful little gold nugget. But man is it small. I have no problems with a 34mm watch but it wore so tiny on my wrist which, granted, is over 7", but still. I think one on a bracelet would work better and still think about that, but it's pretty far from the top of my list. Seems like enough people know this now that the market probably will continue to be middling, except for the really cool unique ones you mention. Everyone's busy pumping Lange now anyway...
oh wow that hayek interview was something else. no remorse, instead he deflects all blame. no empathy even for his own store employees, let alone the mall-staff or the police.
but this is not yet rock-bottom for swatch-group. there will be more atrocities coming from them, as they fight for their survival in the coming years. they’ve already shown they have no limits, legal (speedy auction fraud) or moral.
I’ve never completely understood the Blancpain Market Malaise. I’m the proud owner of a FF 50th Anniversary (hard to believe it’s now 23 years old!) that I bought several years ago along with several other FF variants (all bought used to avoid Blancpain’s dreadful initial value hit). They are all fantastic watch’s and I like wearing them. Will they ever increase in value? Who knows?
All of this said, it reminds me of the early 2000’s in the wine world when I was buying loads of Burgundy from the likes of Roumier, Mugnier, DRC, Mugngeret-Gibourg, etc., etc. All of my wine collecting friends were buying Bordeaux, California Cults, etc. and they thought I was crazy, but I LOVED Burgundy, enjoyed drinking it and was not particularly fond of Cab-based wines…so I continued to buy what I liked.
Of course there are thousands of cases of Bordeaux produced by the “collectible” Chateaux each year (think Patek as per the example above), but only hundreds of cases of the best Burgundies, so it never made sense to me why they traded for LESS money than the Bordeaux. We all now know what happened…Burgundy prices skyrocketed and Bordeaux flat lined or declined.
I’m not saying Blancpain is DRC to Patek’s Latour, BUT over time when things are beautiful, exceptionally well made and fairly priced (relative to alternatives), the market eventually takes notice. If I was a betting man, this will happen someday with Blancpain…