[d33nastyle]

Originally Posted by justdate

Also under 35 (by a matter of days!!) but started getting into watches when I was 20, so been around a while. The thing is, when the aquanaut was £15k, that money would pick you up a full gold day date or full gold GMT2 from a trusted seller. It was 3x the cost of a brand new steel sub. A brand new Royal Oak 15400st was also a good bit cheaper.

So it was still relatively very expensive, and completely prohibitive. I remember in 2011 my boss had one and me and my friends could not figure out why the hell anyone would spend that much money on something that looked like it belonged in the 70s! It was not ‘cool’ then either, so it really was a pretty left field choice. I used to go around London ADs on my weekends and try on all the dress watches admiring their beauty and heritage. Sure putting on a 5980/1R was a blast, but never the steel basics like 5711 or 5167, they really didn’t appeal to most people at the time, and were not what we knew Patek for.

Point being they were never a good entry point for regular enthusiasts. I personally bought my first Patek a few years later in 2015, I wanted a proper dress watch, since that is what Patek meant to me - and most people too. I’d had a good year so I went 5205R but otherwise it would have been the Calatrava - which is not only quintessentially Patek, but also the ideal entry model into the brand. The perfect one and done, and also the perfect start of a collection.

I think exactly the same, more than 10 years ago I found it inconceivable to spend almost 20k in a 3hands in steel ... i bought my first Rolex for 3700€ at this period :fumer: