The New York Times: How to Buy a Vintage Watch (and Not Get Fleeced)
These days, vintage watches are hot enough that some aficionados treat their collections like 401(k) accounts: a great way to build for retirement. But with prices spiking, the level of risk is shooting up, too. Even experts can get stuck with bad merchandise if they are not careful. Eric Wind, a vice president and the senior watch specialist at Christie’s New York and a longtime contributor to Hodinkee, the watch blog, discussed the new rules of buying vintage.
What is driving the vintage watch boom? There are two main factors: scholarship and social media. By scholarship, I mean blogs like Hodinkee, collector forums and auction houses. Instagram has also drastically changed the field. Watch-collecting used to be a private affair, but now you have tens of thousands of watch collectors showing off their watches and millions of people following them. — The New York Times