No one takes a Patek Philippe Nautilus for sale on eBay for a few thousand euro seriously: it’s either fake or stolen. But economic bubbles are something we can only see afterwards. Strange, that. Year after year the Swiss watch industry has been realising record turnovers. The big groups took the lead and new, small watch brands followed in their wake and the prices went up and up. No one, including myself, noticed the fact that slowly but surely a bubble was being created that strongly resembled the Dutch tulip mania.