Messages: 6648 Location: The Little Red Dot
Registered: November 2007
2012 SOTC Tally
Thu, 10 January 2013 20:37
Sorry to keep all of you waiting, here is my analysis of the 2012 SOTC. This is the third year I've tallied the SOTC's.
I've taken last year's tally post as the template and updated the figures.
COLLECTIONS
The tally for this year is 1,687 watches, compared to 1,725 last year. If you went back to last year's post, you'd notice the total was 1,596 when I did the analysis, but the eventual total was 1,725 watches.
There were 148 posts this year, exactly the same as last year. That's an average of 11.4 watches per post this year, vs 11.7 last year
Of the 148 posts, 70 were first time posters, 35 members posted each of the last three years. This factoid will turn out to be significant, as I explain at the end of this post.
Collection size ranged from 2 to 132 watches (Paul Delury's collection).
ERA
This year there were 1,328 modern and 359 vintage watches, making the split nearly 80/20, same as previous year
COMPLICATIONS
Besides time-only watches, chronographs are the most common complication.
The breakdown is very similar for all years. If I filtered out the vintage watches, the other complications will weigh in higher (see below analysis of modern watches)
CASE MATERIAL
Steel is most common case material. Margin for error may be as high as 20% - eg: PVD or DLC-coated cases assumed to be steel based. Steel-gold cases are usually classified as steel. Some exotic cases that were not identified as such may have been lumped under steel too.
There seems to be an upturn in RG watches, but I believe that to be my own inconsistencies in recording. I've also been more vigilant in recording vintage watches as Silver rather than Steel this year.
After preparing the tables, I noticed I left in a potato from one of the SOTC's post. Oh well.
BRANDS
Overall 201 brands were represented this year, compared to 207 last year
Cumulatively over the three years, 335 brands were represented. That's a huge number of watch brands!
Below lists the top ranked brands that tallied 10 or more this year, and the corresponding total previous two years
Notable decreases include Blancpain, Panerai, Lange. Notable increases include Sinn and Vacheron+Constantin.
Hamilton made a strong comeback this year, largely due to Paul Delury's massive vintage collection
Missing brands this year include Bucherer, Genta, Pierre Kunz, Alain Silberstein, Bulgari & Concord (only ever been 1 Bulgari and 1 Concord in 3 SOTC's)
I'll be posting a separate full table somewhere at the end of this post, if I can get it to show up legibly
VINTAGE ONLY
There were 359 vintage watches out of the 1,687 total.
Of 140 posts, 63 included at least one vintage watch - representing 45% of WIS'es.
Of these 63 vintage watch posts, 10 of them accounted for 63% of the vintage watches, a similar pattern from previous tallies.
The brand representation can be widely skewed depending on who posted their collection in each year
Again, Rolex and Omega may be larger - I may have misclassified some as modern
Vast majority of vintage watches were time-only
MODERN ONLY
The profile of complications for all years are quite similar - slightly more than half the watches are time only; chronographs are the most popular complication
There were 158 brands of modern watches represented
The top 32 brands below accounted for 1036 watches - the 20/80 rule almost precisely
Excluding vintage watches, Rolex is now the top-ranked brand, swapping places with Omega
I'll repeat what I commented last year: at a stretch you could take the breakdown below as a proxy for market share, not in the regular world, but in the WIS world.
I reckon there are essentially 3 tiers: Omega and Rolex are tier one, say 10% share each; then a bunch in tier two, between 2-5% share each; then the rest forming a very fragmented watch world
What's more interesting (and intuitively, rather than from data collected), is that the tier one is represented by relatively few models - Subs, Explorers, Daytonas, Speedmasters, Seamasters, etc
As we go down the tiers, the models and brands start to fragment to myriad models
So the typical WIS collector has a couple iconic models from tier 1, possibly 2-3 watches from tier 2, and then 5-6 personal favourites from tier 3, which runs to over 150 brands
What I said at the top of the post was that the three years of data came from rather different sets of posters each year. And yet, the data unveil a consistent pattern and profile each year. I find that significant.
If anyone would like the database, please contact me by email or PM. Do note it is in excel, and you'll need to understand basic pivot table
Thanks again for all your participation. I'm not sure I can do this again next year!
Jit
PS: Here's the total count broken down by brand. Squint if you must... :)
- jitsbits