destrodan
509
I was surmising about perpetuals
Jun 11, 2022,20:11 PM
Patek became the masters of mass-producing perpetuals (along with very few select others) until IWC made the complication ubiquitous. For the first few years that the IWC Da Vinci perpetual hit the market, they outsold all other swiss perpetuals combined. The price was relatively accessible for a prior-stratospherically priced complication. And decades later, these Da Vinci's are still very usable perpetuals due to their robust manufacturing and construction.
Over time, many more competitors entered the market at the middle to lower edges (a recent one being Frederique Constant).
Yes, modern manufacturing methods helped make the complication less prone to manufacturing error and more easily produced - ergo more accessible and less exclusive.
The separate Rolex versus Perpetual anecdote that I shared (not related to manufacturing) was because I remember being in the market for an IWC Da Vinci perpetual and Rolex Submariner in the early 2000s. And I remember the prices on the primary and secondary markets. But I don't conflate the market pricing with manufacturing. It's possible that people just don't like perpetuals as much as they did and this could drive the demand-curve down.
I appreciate your input on the MR, triple-split and LM Sequential Evo. I didn't think about the triple-split.