Good point, as always, John.

I have always imagined that there is a man on a mountain, somewhere -- maybe Switzerland and maybe California -- who has thousands of these vintage watches, but he keeps them to himself. No social media; no discussion forums; no GTGs; etc.

So maybe the correct reference is "Known to Collectors" or "On the Grid"? Still, I have always focused more on the "Samples Per Year" metric [flow of the watches] than "Survival Rate" [which may be too static].

Jeff

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

: Jeff,

: I think the survival rate is way higher than 10%. What I think is
: that the collector community may know about 10% of some of these
: more popular executions but that there are way more of them out
: in "civilian" (non nerd) hands. I do agree with your
: production conclusions so I guess I just don't agree with how
: you arrive at them. My bet is that closer to 30-40% of these
: vintage watches still exist somewhere. Anyway, one of the
: reasons for me to think/hope that my survival number are more
: correct is that if gives me hope of finding watches in the
: wild.