Several years ago...I believe it may have been at a Christie's auction, a nice example of a scarce (not rare) and very collectable American RR watch sold for $16,000.00. These watches had been selling for a high of about $6,000 for several years up until that point. The watch was a 26 jewel Pennsylvania Special. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 200+ of these watches were built by the Illinois Watch Company in the early part of the 20th Century.

After the sale quite a few of these watches came out of collections and were put on the market. Very few if any of them sold. Even now, some years later, the market for this watch is a bit confused but I believe very nice examples can be bought for about half the auction price.

The moral of the story, as my father the statistics professor would undoubtedly say, is one sale does not a market make.

My opinion only....and I have been wrong before.

JohnCote