I can't comment on what happened at Antiquorum but describing the current market for vintage Heuers as a "bloodbath" is just plain wrong.

A bloodbath is the share price of something like Citigroup, which went from $50 18 months ago to $1 yesterday. OK, that is an extreme one, but even a broad based stock index like the Dow is down to levels last seen in the late 1990's.

So when I can buy a mint 1133 Mcqueen Monaco for $750, or a Viceroy for $150, then we can talk about bloodbath.

We saw a PVD Monaco trade for a huge premium to the last price, ok, people comment on the high end holding (ok, increasing significantly) it's value, but even the low end like Viceroys are slightly softer, but certainly not back to values they were three years ago, when you could easily find a nice Viceroy for $500-600.

So why are Heuer's holding their value? Are all Heuer collectors billionaires unaffected by the recession? I doubt it! I believe the reason Heuer's have kept their value is the same reason the gold price has doubled from $500 an ounce in 2007 to near $1000 today. The supply of gold on earth is limited and rare. People want to spend money on something they know is real. All financial instruments are distrusted, but with a physical commodity you know where you are.

I'm not surprised the value of new or near new watches has dropped massively. If I look in a watch magazine there seems to be a thousand different manufacturers each producing what seems like a thousand different limited rare models. All those models have no history and their value is based on the fact that they are expensive. I'm not surprised watches like that are in a "bloodbath". But I don't see that in the watch markets I monitor, vintage Heuer, Omega and Breitling. There you have a finite amount of watches, with no new production. So for me it's more like gold.