BRAND KNOWLEDGE
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We all know that money can be made from investing in art and good wine but Investing in a vintage collectible watch has proven to be one of the best modes of investment for those looking to invest lots of disposable income in alternative investments. The market for collectible watches has been evolving and the best watch brands that have stood the test of times and are every passionate watch lovers favourite, including Patek Philippe, Rolex, Breguet and Cartier.
Legend has it that the wristwatch first became popular in World War I. Soldiers and aviators found having to fumble around in a pocket to find their watch while engaging with the enemy troublesome. Until then, wristwatches had been mainly worn by women, but the trend was rapidly adopted by the population at large.
Cartier was the first of the Swiss watchmakers to produce a wristwatch, the Santos, which appeared in 1911, but soon the other brands followed suit. Today the early Swiss wristwatches are regarded as the best pieces and fetch 10s – or even hundreds – of thousands of pounds at auction.
BRAND KNOWLEDGE
Rolex is certainly the first name that springs to most people’ s minds when talking about vintage watches. The company was actually founded in London in 1905 by Hans Wilsdorf and Alfred Davis to import watches from Switzerland, but it soon turned to watchmaking and moved to Switzerland.
Rolex’ s fame springs largely from its reputation for innovation – it produced the first watches with automatically changing day and date indictors, and it was a pioneer in developing waterproof timepieces, first the Oyster and then the Submariner.
The undisputed aristocrat among Swiss watchmakers is Patek Philippe. The company started making pocket watches in 1839 and has been responsible for some key innovations in the industry, such as the perpetual calendar, split-seconds hand, chronograph and minute repeater.
The Patek Philippe Nautilus is among the all-time classics. First introduced in 1976, its design was inspired by the shape of a porthole. The company is responsible for some of the most expensive watches ever sold. An ultra-complicated Patek Philippe watch originally made in 1933 as a complete one-off sold 66 years later for $ 11 million(£ 7.3 million) – a world record at the time.
Obviously there are many collectable brands of watch. Among the best-known are Omega, Vacheron & Constantin, Audemars Piguet, Longines, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Cartier, Tissot, Breitling and TAG Heuer.
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