: why would the new management team want to generate interest
: in vintage models? Their job is to sell new watches.

A few thoughts from me.

Virtually no one needs a watch anymore. Its a luxury purchase. When people spend big cash on a non-essential purchase , they want to buy into all the stuff that a luxury brand conveys - taste/style, exclusivity, and a sense of continuity, history, You can look at a Porsche from 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, and know they are Porsches. They have Porsche DNA. Montblanc pen? Gucci shoes? Cartier cufflinks? Hermes tie? Rolex? Same applies. One of the ways that companies create than continuity is too look into back catalogues and draw inspiration from them, to keep the same DNA flowing. Thats what contributes to Brand. Patek? “You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation”. Continuity.

In the case of Breitling, that have an amazing, amazing, amazing vintage back catalogue of references. So many "firsts" came from the Breitling stable, such as the rotating slide rule, the 2 button chronograph, and the first automatic chronograph (with Heuer etc of course). The modern day Brietling company however (which has tons of fans), had a Jackson Pollock, scattergun approach to models, many of which IMO are dreadful, unless 48 mm diamond encrusted bling bezels are your thing. These models have little connection to the past. So the company lacks the continuity a luxury brand would want and need. No history = no continuity. By reintroducing a few references from the past, they are trying to bridge that time void. With the intro of the new 806 1959 Navitimer, modern buyers will look at that back catalogue (and Breitling will help them do that via aggressive marketing), and I guess they feel that they are buying legacy. stability. success

I suspect Breitling will have a limited number of reissues, and it will be of the things that are in scare supply in the vintage market. Navitimer now done. 765 AVI will come? Maybe a Superocean? Recall that Breitling was purchased 2 years ago for what I thing was reported circa euro 1.5B. They're not getting a return on investment on that by limited run back-catalogue reissues. Indeed, they need a few new hit-em-out-of-the-ballpark new models to light the fire.

Just my quick 2 cents. Excuse the typos of which I'm sure there are many.