Watch collecting is no less prone to the cyclical zeitgeist of the fashion, music, or art worlds, and if you need proof, look to the wrists of high-vis celebrities such as Tyler the Creator and Timothée Chalamet. who have been showing us the trend toward smaller watches. These dudes are wearing Cartiers so petite that they would’ve faced expulsion from the horological sandbox in the early 2000s or, more recently, from hangs with neophyte pandemic collectors and crypto bros who were crazy for big sports watches. The point being that smaller watches are very much in vogue, and, as concerns us here, most of the great ones are nearly a century old. And there’s been a bit of pricing turmoil for Rolex collecting lately. Rolex’s sport models are dropping in value, while the dressier Rolex Day-Date 36 keeps skyrocketing in value—but the even-smaller Rolex Bubblebacks exist as if in a realm of the own, away from the swaying prices of more recent models...
