Ultimately its always about supply and demand, in the car market last year RV's were battered (technical term!) however the stronger brands with lower supply performed less badly. This year the used car market has seen values rally strongly in the UK albeit from a historical low.

Obviously if demand doesn;t grow further then low supply is not the continued driver it has been. Demand has to grown further for the equation to equal meaningfully greater values apart from historic appreciation. Clearly the 2 markets are not similar in one sense as volume on Heuers will only be steady at best and in the longer term will dwindle further.

I believe the current resilience and the past strength (from what i can see as i was not following then) in the past 2 years has been from the outstanding work by the "team" in showcasing the Heuer product. However that rate is unlikel;y to continue, certainly without pauses like all markets see. It is ultimately healthy for the Heuer market if there are many small pauses along the way, otherwise it will be hard to attract a broad base appeal as values may be out of many peoples reaches. It's a fine balance, as if the market becomes too toppy and people find another brand or niche to get into then there won;t be a wide enough appeal to support those peak prices.

Its a very interesting subject (there's probably a "paper" in here somwhere!) and i believe heuer prices will ultimately continue to rise, whether that's all models and all models at the same rate is open to debate (i believe it will be selective).

Cheers

Rich

: Great points, as always, Richard. One point that you make seems
: particularly important. There is a big difference between the
: performance of "the market", as a whole, and the
: "market share" that may be captured by a particular
: brand. Yes, the broad market will get hit in difficult economic
: times, and there is no way for a particular class of assets
: (vintage chronographs) to avoid taking some kind of hit, when
: all other classes are suffering downturns. But I beleive that we
: are seeing the vintage Heuer chronographs capture some
: "market share" (i.e., increasing their position in the
: world of vintage watches). I do not follow the Rolex / Omega /
: Breitling markets closely enough to make a good comparison, but
: it is very encouraging when we see so many newcomers / refugees
: arriving in the vintage Heuer community.

: When the broad market for new automobiles (or old watches) is
: struggling, it is interesting to see how particular brands may
: continue to improve their positions.

: Jeff

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