Emil Wojcik
1651
My honest opinion; everyone's so used to decades of RO variants that anything AP comes up with that doesn't reflect what I would consider the company's 'Royal Oak Tunnel Vision'...
Jan 13, 2019,09:15 AM
...just isn't good enough. AP has created a monster, albeit a very likable and profitable one.
But first a little personal history.
When I started collecting back in the '80s, my favorite brand was AP. But not because of the RO. I appreciated the company's foresight in developing a high-end stainless watch, but by the mid '80s the RO just looked dated. I appreciated the brand for what most other collectors considered important in a watch, the movement. Back then, the case design was almost incidental. Most brands made similar looking watches and most collectors wanted vintage, most vintage brands being visually similar. It was the inside the mattered.
Then I stopped collecting watches in the early '90s when I switched my focus to collecting antiquities, art, ancient coins and more. I had sold most of my watches but kept a Rolex because of its durability and practicality, and a couple lesser watches and added a Navitimer around 2003 just because I liked the look.
In 2011, my wife bought me a watch magazine and it brought back memories, bringing me back to collecting watches although most of my disposable funds still go into my other collections. It was then I discovered just how different watch collecting had become over the years.
Of course the movement is still as important as ever, but now there's more depth involved. I realized collectors now cared much more about case design and standing out as a brand, and technological advancements in manufacturing and materials. This was all new to me. In fact, I still prefer vintage or vintage style, although there are exceptions. I'd take a VH Deep Space or a JD Charming Bird any day to name just two, but they're outside my price range.
So, back to the new AP.
I believe AP has become so known for the RO and its variants that everyone has unrealistic expectations; they don't know how to react to anything from AP outside the RO line. Comparisons are inevitable, but seem even more prevalent when discussing AP than other brands. I presume it's because most other brands have more variety between their lines than AP to begin with so it's expected for them to have some design similarities when compared to other manufactures.
I see so many brands with models similar to other brands but the similarities almost seems to go unnoticed or at least are more accepted. But with brands such as AP, who are known mostly for one specific line, it seems everyone has a hard time accepting that a new model line doesn't visually exhibit some DNA of its most cherished model.
AP is still one of my favorite manufactures and I like the new line quite a bit, actually. I seem to be in the minority.