The Hamilton is the absolute star of that collection. The chronograph version of the pan europa with 80 hour power reserve his available for less that £800 and is a fantastic watch.

would be a very weird future where CW suddenly rise to the top! Not overly sure how they are even on this mainstream list. Same with yema. Not sure yema sell many watches outside of kickstarter. Breitlings weird over pricing/massive discount policy rules them out. Longine are absolutely rocking at the moment. They have the history, the designs, the quality, the sales network and the correct pricing. They would be my choice. Saying that tissot and Hamilton also do great stuff at fair prices and have the heritage. I guess swatch knows what they are doing!

Yes “easy”is probably to strong a word. I mean they are gettable now. I was offered a white gold one by an ad and I wasn’t down on the list. But I had bought a lot from them previously. The gold Daytona is now £33,500 and I suspect it won’t be long before you can buy them on the secondary market for that price.

If we are talking genuine in house movements then I have some horror storie. Blancpain took 18 months to service a villeret model I had and charged me more than 50% of the value of the watch. Apparently they didn’t have the part anymore and had to make it. I also have an AP huiltime chronograph from about 1991. It broke. Sent to AP in Switzerland by AP dealer in London. The “holy trinity “ watchmaker cannot service the movement as it no longer makes the parts and told me to get lost. Both watches can not be serviced by anyone else as the parts are not available. So that’s in-house movements for you. The only watch companies I would trust to service a genuine in house movement in 20 years time are Rolex and omega.

when this watch first came out ADs we’re taking £500 deposits in UK from customers who had spend history’s way higher than the one you mention… and most of those deposits were refunded and the customers didn’t get one. But now things are very different. The gold Daytona you mention is now available with a very short wait and people are passing on them when offered. Flippers won’t touch them thank god. And if snoopys are now available in one day then perhaps we are getting back to the old days. I hope so.