Genuine Vintage Daytona for $210!

[Guest Sql_pl]

... if you find a way to go back in time!

And as it is easiest to find such old price lists in USD, I have a question - was $210 a lot for US-based people for a watch back then? How much did people make back in 60's, 70's?

Was that a similar expense to current 116520? Less? More?

Thanks in advance!

[llsteve80]

According to this chart on wikipedia, the 2004 average salary was about 30k. A new daytona is about 9k, so thats about 29% of the average US salary.

In 1960, the average salary was about 4k, making the daytona around 5% of the average Salary. 5% is still a high fraction of one's salary to be spending on one watch, but now there are more people in the US, and more who make enough money so that 9k isn't so much money. Hope this helps

[lhooq]

Not that I was alive back then, but... My understanding is that $210 was a lot of money for a watch, but nowhere near current price expectations for luxury goods. Put that amount through an inflation calculator and you get the equivalent of $1500!

Interestingly, a Speedmaster in the early 60s would sell for $200. I'm sure Omega looks back on the last fifty years as a huge marketing failure!

[txcollector]

If this was 1960 this would cost around $5.5K today if using the gold standard.

[panerai153]

I was alive and working back then!! Our salaries were approximately. 900.00 USD per month in 1967. My wife was a school teacher and her salary was around 400.00 USD (Gross) and mine was a little over 500.00 USD. So yes, for the average person, plunking down half a months salary for a watch was a pretty big decision. Just to put things in perspective, in 1968 I bought a brand new Ford Galaxy 500, which was a full size Ford at that time, with A/C, power windows and nice interior. Sticker price was 4800.00 USD!! Plain Jane Ford pickups were less than 2k, but they didn't have any accessories except a heater and a AM radio.

Around the same time I bought my first Rolex, a datejust and I think I paid around 200.00 USD a few years later I traded it for a non date sub and I believe I gave the Datejust and 200.00 USD for the sub. I didn't keep it but a few months as I didn't like not having a date function. My wife and I happened to be in New Orleans, and I saw a new 1680 for around 500.00 USD. I managed to wrangle a trade, the non date plus 250.00 USD. I wore that watch for probably 10 years. In the mid 70's I bought several more, including a Daytona, another 1680 and a 1665. I don't recollect paying over 500.00 USD for any of them. I don't remember exactly when Rolex prices began to really go up like crazy, but it was probably during the hyper inflation years, early 1980's. Gold went up too, and that had a big influence on prices of Gold watches as well.

[freddy333]

1 of my relatives was an AD back then & $210 was alot of money for a watch. As a reference, the average Timex or Bulova cost around $29.

I would also add that, in the case of Daytonas, they were not very popular watches & often had to be sold at a discount to get them off dealers' shelves. The 3 major complaints were their size (they were considered too large), premium cost & lack of auto-wind (which, by the late 60s, had become available on chronos from other watch companies).

[redwatch]

While that may be true, you can still get an average Timex for $29.00 Doesn't that put things into perspective???

[Guest jsuperman17]

shows you rolex doesnt care.. they know they have a good product and have the price tag to justify it...

[mcotter]

An elder friend graduated from Brown University in 1962. w/ his graduation money he purchased a silver dial pre-daytona from Abercrombie & Fitch in New York (not the current retailer, the original outfitter) @ $185.00.....In 2008 I sold this watch for $29,000 for him so he could take he & his wife to the Orient for a month! Regards, mcotter

[cjjoyce1]

in 1968 I bought a brand new Ford Galaxy 500, which was a full size Ford at that time, with A/C, power windows and nice interior. Sticker price was 4800.00 USD!!

Not surprising. Up until the mid-1980's and the rise of the Yuppies and Dual-Income families being the norm - the average price of a new car was about that of the national average annual salary. The average home cost was 4 times the annual salary.

Today? Well we all know how skewed it is today. . .

[panerai153]

1 of my relatives was an AD back then & $210 was alot of money for a watch. As a reference, the average Timex or Bulova cost around $29.

I would also add that, in the case of Daytonas, they were not very popular watches & often had to be sold at a discount to get them off dealers' shelves. The 3 major complaints were their size (they were considered too large), premium cost & lack of auto-wind (which, by the late 60s, had become available on chronos from other watch companies).

Freddy,

I think another thing that to me was a minus for the Daytonas was the lack of a date function. I owned one for a pretty short time, and I traded it for a submariner.Ii just couldn't gety used to the non date. Back then, we didn't have cell phones and other handy electronic devices that would give us all the time/date info at the touch of a button. carrying a calendar around wasn't too handy!

Actually quite a lot of Rolex models languished in the dealers showcases and safes for quite a while. it's not uncommon to see watches with a date stamp inside the caseback and punched papers dated a couple of years later. Some folks over on VRF don't seem to grasp that and are quick to say that something is faked, but in actuality, watches often sat for quite a while before being sold, especially with dealers in smaller towns tha didn't have a lot of sales.We had a dealer in our town that took a beating on 18k Day Dates. She would order 15 or 20 at a time,around the end of October, as we had a thriving oil business here, and lots of the big guns would actually give them as Christmas presents. In about 1985, the oil business crashed, and her sales went to zero. She ended up selling most of them at cost, just to get rid of them, and even at that, it took her probably over a year to sell them.I would bet that some of hers had close to a two year difference between the manufacture date and actual sales date.

[freddy333]

All good points & true, but I wanted to limit my comments to only those complaints I heard directly from the source.

[Dave123]

While that may be true, you can still get an average Timex for $29.00 Doesn't that put things into perspective???

Some things dont change,or change oddly. There was a time that a house here in Toronto cost 100k and same house in Florida cost 100k,now that house in Toronto cost over a million and that house in Florida is 60k....

[alterego]

Food for thought kind of question.

In 1968 I went to the US for the first time as college sophomore in a two month exchange program. A Volkswagen Beetle sold for $ 1.777. "It takes lees green to drive a VW, was the advertising motto. That same year, I bought my first Rolex, a Ref 1500 SS Perpetual Date in Chile for US $275. This past February I was in Cozumel and I tried the new "Date" with dommed bezel,at a Rolex Dealer. A real beauty, at $ 4.850. Although I'm not in the US now,I guess I could get new beetle for about $ 18/ 20 K, after rebate, at my friendly VW dealer in Chicago, that´s paying about 10 times what I would have paid in 68. Still, that´s not the outrageous cost of the 2011 version of the Date today Ref 15200, which sells for $ 5 K, that is 20 times the cost of the equivalent watch back in 1968.

My 00.2 cents contribution to the thread

... if you find a way to go back in time!

And as it is easiest to find such old price lists in USD, I have a question - was $210 a lot for US-based people for a watch back then? How much did people make back in 60's, 70's?

Was that a similar expense to current 116520? Less? More?

Thanks in advance!

[Jkay]

Don't forget that the "New" Beetle is a lot different than the old Beetle .. where a stainless steel watch ... is ... a watch.

[Guest zeleni kukuruz]

I just got a gen one of these

Its in my head, it gives me wet dreams at night and every morning when i wake up its gone

Well at least i have it around 6hours at night

And its more then enough bellive me

Edited April 23, 2011 by Zeleni Kukuruz

[marcl]

Very interesting subject. Something I love discussing with my Father, a lot. It seems to me that, in the UK at least the last 15 years are when stuff in general sky rocketed. A few examples: At about 22 years old,(I'm 34 now) having been a year or so into my career, I bought my self a Moon Watch. The list was £1275. A year or two ago I looked out of interest and the list price was double! My earnings haven't! A year later I bought my first house, I paid £65500. My local estate agent told me, as the market is very slow right now, if I wanted a quick sale, She would only get me £165000. Thats some rise!

When I was 23/24 years old I went to a Rolex AD I was about to buy a no-date sub, £2575 list and he offered me a discount! look at the price of subs now.

The problem is, in the UK and the USA, we spend too much, we are too materialistic and retailers know this. I know that I may get a barrage of offended responses, but most of us have too much money. A generation or two ago a Man would buy a watch to tell the time for the next 30 years. Now we have 10 or 20+ watches sat in winders. Some families have 4 or 5 cars on the drive, it wasn't that long ago that there would only be 1 or maybe 2. Even Kids have too much stuff PS3, Wii's and iphones. I had a football.

Kind regards, Marc.

[preacher62]

I was born in 1946. My dad bought a 1955 Dodge...loaded?...for about $1000. In 1968 a new Pontiac GTO Judge was $1,850 (of course, there weren't much to them but an engine and tranmission.) Talk about an investment. If we only knew.

I recently worked on a 1959 vintage DJ 1601 that had never had the case back removed. This guy was a drummer for Kitty Wells and was touring in Germany in about 1960 where he purchased the watch for $450. Classic steel and 18K yellow gold.

When I got out of the Army, in 1970, we all wanted to find a job where "you could work up to" $10,000 per year.

I remember Timex' were $8 - $10 in the 60s, but I don't remember Bulovas for $29. I bought a new Bulova Snorkel (which I still have and serviced last year) when I was on Okinawa in 1967 for $40, but it was marked $60. Great movements back then. I just serviced a 1939 Hamilton and it runs like a dream.

In 1973 my brother-in-law bought a new Rolex GMT for $1,800.

[freddy333]

The problem is, in the UK and the USA, we spend too much, we are too materialistic and retailers know this. I know that I may get a barrage of offended responses, but most of us have too much money. A generation or two ago a Man would buy a watch to tell the time for the next 30 years. Now we have 10 or 20+ watches sat in winders. Some families have 4 or 5 cars on the drive, it wasn't that long ago that there would only be 1 or maybe 2. Even Kids have too much stuff PS3, Wii's and iphones. I had a football.

There is a good point here, but I think you have it backwards. The problem is not that we have/make too much money, instead, it is that we need to have/make alot of money to keep up with the Joneses. Otherwise, we fall behind. We (the collective public) have been sold on the idea that we need all of this extraneous stuff (cell phones, X-Boxes, big screen tvs, iPads, iPods, etc) or we are looked upon as strange or eccentric if we do not. What did George Bush do after 9/11 to keep the US economy going - he told everyone to 'shop'. I mean, we have become so tainted that we allow broadcasters to interrupt/obscure our favorite tv programs with advertisements flashing & flying all over the tv screen & we have neither switched the tv off (in protest) or marched on the station with torches & clubs (for the same reason). And, like the public, governments have been shopping too, which is why we are all (collectively) so myopic & in serious debt.

[This post was not phoned in from my cell - I do not carry 1]

[sneed12]

The problem is, in the UK and the USA, we spend too much, we are too materialistic and retailers know this. I know that I may get a barrage of offended responses, but most of us have too much money. A generation or two ago a Man would buy a watch to tell the time for the next 30 years. Now we have 10 or 20+ watches sat in winders. Some families have 4 or 5 cars on the drive, it wasn't that long ago that there would only be 1 or maybe 2. Even Kids have too much stuff PS3, Wii's and iphones. I had a football.

Kind regards, Marc.

How is that a problem? Our standard of living has gone up.

I personally hold the opinion that most people, myself included, own too much junk, but I also don't think it's my place to pass judgment on how much stuff someone needs or "should" have. Why, after all, do you "need" more than one shirt? You can take that line of thinking quite far. Why does anyone "need" even one mechanical watch?

If some families have 4 or 5 cars in the drive, God bless them and the autoworkers and car salesmen and insurance agents that their spending helps to employ. It's not my place to say that they have too much stuff.

[marcl]

How is that a problem? Our standard of living has gone up.

I personally hold the opinion that most people, myself included, own too much junk, but I also don't think it's my place to pass judgment on how much stuff someone needs or "should" have. Why, after all, do you "need" more than one shirt? You can take that line of thinking quite far. Why does anyone "need" even one mechanical watch?

If some families have 4 or 5 cars in the drive, God bless them and the autoworkers and car salesmen and insurance agents that their spending helps to employ. It's not my place to say that they have too much stuff.

I don't have a problem with our 'better standard of living' the problem, as I call it is the fact that, as we Earn more, we buy more, Whether or not we need it. Or in some cases, actually want it or not. And that drive prices up. Simple supply and demand and that is the discussion here. We didn't buy as much years ago, mainly because we didn't have the availability of credit as we do today, and therefore demand was lower and so were prices.

Now as for our standard of living being better, I'm not convinced it is. Just because we have all this stuff doesn't guarantee a better standard of living. There have been numerous studies into the fact that children have all these gadgets and toys now a days, and are more unhappy than ever.

It always surprises me when I go to France (I am half French) They earn less than us in the UK and work less hours but have a much better standard of living, better education and the best health service in the world. in France it's about life not stuff.

I not passing judgement or how much stuff you or I may have, just making an observation as to why prices have gone up so.

Kind regards, Marc.

[freddy333]

Marc - You make some good points about France's quality of life. This is especially true with their health system. However, the other side of the coin is that while the individual is well-cared for by the state, the state is a shambles, socially. Have you been following the goings-on within the Muslim community there? It is a virtual powder keg, just waiting to go off. And when it does, it will be interesting to see how the average French citizen's quality of life fares. Also, whenever France is attacked (think WWI & WWI), they either surrender or get overrun. Why? Because France has chosen to favor social programs over defense. I am not necessarily criticizing that, but it is important to note that the US, which (at least up until now) has always chosen, instead, to maintain a strong defense, always bails France (& other countries that choose not to adequately defend themselves) out. Again, this is not so much a criticism as it is an observation. The point is that every choice comes with a consequence.

I think this kind of leads back to Rolex's decision not to incorporate features like a date & auto-wind into their early Daytona models. While these complications would have been useful, I think they chose to put their efforts, as usual, into those improvements that resulted in more accurate time-keeping & greater longevity. And, 40+ years later, it is the Daytona that commands serious prices, not its (dated & auto-wind) competitors.

[marcl]

Marc - You make some good points about France's quality of life. This is especially true with their health system. However, the other side of the coin is that while the individual is well-cared for by the state, the state is a shambles, socially. Have you been following the goings-on within the Muslim community there? It is a virtual powder keg, just waiting to go off. And when it does, it will be interesting to see how the average French citizen's quality of life fares. Also, whenever France is attacked (think WWI & WWI), they either surrender or get overrun. Why? Because France has chosen to favor social programs over defense. I am not necessarily criticizing that, but it is important to note that the US, which (at least up until now) has always chosen, instead, to maintain a strong defense, always bails France (& other countries that choose not to adequately defend themselves) out. Again, this is not so much a criticism as it is an observation. The point is that every choice comes with a consequence.

I think this kind of leads back to Rolex's decision not to incorporate features like a date & auto-wind into their early Daytona models. While these complications would have been useful, I think they chose to put their efforts, as usual, into those improvements that resulted in more accurate time-keeping & greater longevity. And, 40+ years later, it is the Daytona that commands serious prices, not its (dated & auto-wind) competitors.

I agree Freddy, you can't have both, the defense and health care are good examples, not cheap! But which would you rather have, today I mean? In 1939 a great army, navy and air force was a must for us, but now in 2011? with the UN. I would rather have the health service. Having a large army can be a real pain in the [censored], Whenever there is trouble in the middle east it's the USA and UK who foot the bill, or at least most of it.

As for the trouble with muslim community in France, the problems are no where near as bad as the press lead you to believe. France is quite rightly saying you cannot wear a burkar in public. A. because we need to see your face, especially when you walk into a bank and B. because a lot of women are forced to wear them by there husbands and the French feel this will help them out of any possible oppression.

The funny thing is on the British news, all they showed on the subject were people protesting and fighting the ban, but go onto the smaller more detailed news sites and channels and you find muslim women saying they are happy for it to be banned.

I hope I haven't caused any offence.

Marc.

[freddy333]

In 1939 a great army, navy and air force was a must for us, but now in 2011? with the UN. I would rather have the health service. Having a large army can be a real pain in the [censored], Whenever there is trouble in the middle east it's the USA and UK who foot the bill, or at least most of it.

Actually, in 1939, the US did not have a great army or air force. In fact, we (badly) lost the initial battles against the Germans & Japanese in WWII because we, like the French (& Brits), buried our heads in the sand, believing that, after The Great War (WWI), no one needed great armies anymore. Unfortunately, we also failed to take a thug (Hitler) at his word. Today, there are numerous thugs who are very clear (at least to their own people) about their intentions. And as much as I like China, wait until their oil needs outpace their supply. History has proven, repeatedly, that those who do not plan for war are condemned to be overrun by it.

I do not want to steal this thread, so I will leave it there.

[marcl]

Actually, in 1939, the US did not have a great army or air force. In fact, we (badly) lost the initial battles against the Germans & Japanese in WWII because we, like the French (& Brits), buried our heads in the sand, believing that, after The Great War (WWI), no one needed great armies anymore. Unfortunately, we also failed to take a thug (Hitler) at his word. Today, there are numerous thugs who are very clear (at least to their own people) about their intentions. And as much as I like China, wait until their oil needs outpace their supply. History has proven, repeatedly, that those who do not plan for war are condemned to be overrun by it.

I do not want to steal this thread, so I will leave it there.

Yeah well said. Now what did the OP say, who has the best sub?