gerald.d
140
Very desirable...
Feb 09, 2017,08:16 AM
Here's the thing. If these are so desirable, how come there are so few of them? How come we don't see them up for sale all the time?
The "make it with whatever they can find" doesn't make sense. Carved dial 3180's in good condition are hitting close to $4K these days. Why use one of those as the base, when you can pick up an applied dial one for a quarter of that? As I said before - for every carved dial 3180 you see, you will come across 50 or more applied dials. Sure, prices have risen quite a bit of late, but it has always been the case (apart from in 1961!!) that the applied logo ones massively outnumber the carved and printed dials.
The "so many variants" thing doesn't necessarily prove your point - after all, the gold filled ones exist with multiple variants, and cross-overs too (printed dial with flat hands, for example - which is a bit odd, but there you go).
The platinum ones go for 3x the amount for two reasons. Firstly - and this is the main reason - they have been publicly and officially recognized as being the genuine article. Secondly, well, they're platinum.
The real question should be - 'if' it has been confirmed as you say, that no SS3180 were ever made by Seiko, then why are these selling for 8-10K?
If there ever is an official statement on these, then I don't doubt they will go up in value, but would people pay more for them than the platinum? I somehow doubt it.
As for the sources - one is at Seiko, the second is a dealer in Japan who used to think these were fakes, but has recently come across some information that has convinced him that Seiko did produce SS3180's, but they were never offered for sale to the public. I should stress that I am not saying that mine is definitely genuine - I don't have any provenance to prove it is. I'm simply saying that new information has come to light relatively recently that supposedly confirms there are some real examples. Information that I believe may be made common knowledge at some point in the future.
And of course there is still the biggest mystery of all - why the unique medallion?
Kind regards,
Gerald.