Reddit reviews Complete Price Guide to Watches 2013

Not complete re: the really high end models and private labels. But the first 100 pages of general info are valuable to even a novice collector or watchmaker.

[here](Complete Price Guide to Watches 2013 http://www.amazon.com/dp/0982948727/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_awd_2JMOrb1A265AX)

> Supply and demand is the biggest factor but as you said some things are limited and some aren't.

Something just as important as supply and demand is the elasticity of demand—how willing are people who demand X to settle for Y instead at a lower price.

People often talk about the "rarity" of a collectible as if it was an objective fact, but in reality all items are unique, and "rarity" really is a function of how for some items, collectors demand one that is exactly one particular way, while for many other items they don't care, and will consider two copies "the same" even though they are objectively different.

The examples I know best are from vintage American pocket watches. Most collectors desire watches with high jewel counts, 19 or more, and treat most 7-jewel watches from the same company as equivalent to each other. But objectively speaking, many 7-jewel watches are much rarer than some of the favorite, most collectible high-jeweled watches. There were more than a million made of collectors' favorites Hamilton 992 and 992B 21-jewel railroad pocket watches, whereas no more than 610 were made of the obscure Elgin grade 68 7-jewel watch. The 2012 Complete Price Guide to Watches has 10 entries for minor variants of the Hamilton 992 and 992B, with prices between $275 and $2,000 depending on variant, but no entry that matches the Elgin #68 in the linked photo—the closest entry is for a different 7-jewel Elgin with the same "Mat. Laflin" name (made in larger numbers), at $175.