Like in this vintage Rolex GMT, reference number 1675, a version of the GMT-Master
line that was released in the 1970s. This particular 1979 yellow gold piece
is in pretty high demand right now and it's going for around $30,000 in the market.
In previous videos, we've analyzed the gold content of other more modern watch models,
but never before have we tackled a vintage piece this one...so the results we get at the end of
the video should be pretty interesting. But before we start our little experiment,
we want to know what you think. What percentage of the price of this vintage
Rolex do you think comes from the actual gold it contains. Take a wild guess...
Would you say 30, 40 percent, or even higher? Hold that thought for a moment
and at the end of this video, comment how close you came to the right answer!
To find out how much gold our watch contains, we first need to take it apart.
For that, we'll let our preferred watchmaker Chrono Sky take over the show!
One important note that I want to make here is that most gold watches are not made out
of pure gold. You'll see that in a second when we scan the watch with our X-ray analyzer.
This $16,000 Niton XL2 will give us the breakdown of the different
metals that were used to make our watch. Au is the chemical symbol for gold, which as you
can see, makes up approximately 75% of the total mass. That's equivalent to 18 Karats of gold,
which we'll take into consideration later. Now let's weigh all the gold parts…
We get a total of 95.7 grams of 18K gold. But we're not finished yet.
It turns out that the original gold jubilee bracelet of this GMT-Master
comes with 22 links. The one we got our hands on to make this video only has 16,
because it was obviously resized. So in order to make our calculation a bit more accurate,
we need to make a slight adjustment to the prior weight due to the missing links.
This section of the bracelet has 9 links and weights 22.2 grams. It also includes an additional
end link piece that secures the bracelet to the case. If we count that as a regular link as well,
that's like having 10 links in total. Even though the links taper off, meaning that the ones closer
to the case weigh a bit more than the 6 missing smaller links from the opposite end of the
bracelet, to make our calculation simpler, we're going to assume that all the links weigh the same.
Because of our assumption, the final weight in gold will be slightly overstated, but
when you also take into consideration that the watch has probably already lost some
gold over time due to polishing, the weight increase will be slightly negated by that.
So 10 links weighing a total of 22.2 grams gives us 2.22 grams per link or 13.32 grams
for the 6 links that we're missing. When we add this to our previous weight
of 95.7 grams, we come up with a total of 109.02 grams of 18 karat gold.
We then multiply this by 0.75 and get 81.77 grams of pure 24K gold.
Since gold was trading at around $55.22 cents per gram when we recorded our video,
the total value of the gold that this Rolex GMT contains is around $4,515.
This is about 15% of the actual price of the watch.
To tell you the truth, I am a bit shocked with the final number for our vintage piece because it's
A LOT lower than what we've seen for other more modern Rolex watches in our prior videos.
Quite honestly, I expected the number to be a lot higher for an older gold model.
However, it's possible that since a lot of vintage watch collectors are interested in this model,
its price includes a hefty premium due to the collectability factor.
As a result, it is likely that other, less popular gold vintage models will score much higher.
Definitely a topic for a future video! But now, it's time for you to let me know
what you think. Were you expecting a higher number than 15%, or lower?
Also, how close was your initial guess to the final number?
Let me know in a comment below. And make sure to click the like and
subscribe buttons in order to help us bring you more content like this going forward.