Those Amazon reviews have made me belly-laugh. Man did I need that!
Me too. I would rather have an $8 watch on my wrist, and the balance of $79,992.00 tucked away in gold coins in my safety deposit box.
Besides, if they catch you with an $80,000.00 watch on your wrist, they are not going to let you go until they get a lot more from you.
A new GMT II costs under 1/10 what the watch in the OP does, but it still costs a bit more than a disposable watch from Target. The reason I have one is that I appreciate that it is fully mechanical. I’ll never see the insides, but I like knowing they’re there. I like the idea of the intricate movements of tiny springs and gears. I also like the classic styling. Could I have gotten a knock-off/counterfeit? Sure. But given the option I’ll go for the Real Deal whenever possible. I’m sure a $20 vinyl flying jacket is just as warm as a leather one it imitates, but I’ll go for the leather. (And I’d go for original-issue, were I a skinny 20-year-old.)
Also, I never have to replace a battery.
Your $8 watch is probably more accurate than the $80k one (assuming yours is quartz or digital).
The Zenith watch is expensive because it is mechanical, handmade, and mechanically unusual (see minor7flat5’s post). Its performance is no better than yours; it’s expensive for the same reason antique furniture costs more than Ikea.
Apropos of nothing:Sam: What’s in the case?
Deirdre: That isn’t necessary.
Sam: Is it heavy, is it explosive, is it chained to some unlucky bloke’s wrist? Are we gonna have to chop it off?
Deirdre: All right. But I am not under any obligation to let you know…
Sam: If not, the price has gotta go up. I’ll get you the case, but the price has gotta go up. If it’s gonna be a amateur night, I want a hundred thousand dollars. I want it upfront. I want it in a bank account. I want another $100,000 when you get the case.
Stranger
Indeed:
Who is “they”, Susanann?
Amazon.com sells grocery store items too, and I remember that a couple of years ago, some people were having fun with the reviews for a gallon of whole milk. I think this is the page.
Mechanical watches are interesting to contemplate.
There are pros and cons that most people don’t realise.
Accuracy. In reality a high quality mechanical watch is more accurate than a cheap quartz crystal watch. People seem to think that their quartz crystals are basically perfect. They aren’t. They are quite temperature sensitive, and a cheap watch suffers from a wide range of accuracy issues. A well adjusted mechanical watch will outperform it. On the other hand, a good quartz watch will dramatically outperform any mechanical watch.
Mechanical watches are not maintenance free. They need lubricating, and every few years a full service. Which can cost many hundreds of dollars. If they don’t get this, the accuracy falls, and eventually the watch degrades quite a bit. The lack of any need to replace a battery every few years is pretty much obviated by the need to service.
These very expensive watches are built for people who can afford them. They don’t need to worry about putting the residual $79,992 in the bank. They probably make that much money in a week. Most of us will never be that rich. Enough people are that there is a flourishing industry selling them stuff. Considering what very rich women will wear in little more than lumps of carbon, these watches are cheap. As things of mechanical beauty, they are hard to beat. You are paying for design, engineering and craftsmanship, not rarity. If I had the money, I would own one.
The margins on these watches are not astronomical. Big yes, but they cost a lot of money to make. In economic downturns the luxury watch industry hurts big time.
How is a Van Gogh painting any better than something I bought off the rack at Wal-Mart for $50? They’re both canvases with paint on them that sit on a wall and look colorful. Why would anyone pay millions for a Van Gogh? Where is the extra performance?
Watches like that are artwork for people who appreciate beautiful engineering and craftsmanship.
Well, I’m not buying a Van Gogh off of Amazon. But point well taken. The problem is, the people who would appreciate the beautiful engineering and craftsmanship, are few and far between and I think a lot of people like to buy things that both they and the people around them can appreciate and admire. YMMV.
Francis, I hate to break your heart but Tourbillon is no longer at Changi. It used to be may favourite shop, and I have spent ages there perving at essentially the most expensive mechanical porn in the world. If Agatha Heterodyne were real, I like to imagine she makes Swiss watches.
To my eternal joy, the people at Tourbillon let me hold Breguets, Blancpains, Glashuttes, Vacheron Constantins and others (they balked at the $250,000 ones), but no more. I was there in August and again a couple of weeks ago and it is gone. I suspect it was too upmarket even for airports which thrive on upmarket shops.
RIP, Tourbillon. 
Uh huh. Except you can get good engineering and craftsmanship in a watch for 5% of the price in an Omega or Bulova. An $80k watch goes beyond appreciation for fine mechanical design and well into grossly ostentatious conspicuous consumption. And while the Van Gogh is both one of a kind and a solid fiscal investment, the high end watch market is unlikely to accrue substantially in value from an a five figure initial investment.
Stranger
Everyone that hasn’t read the linked gallon of milk reviews, please do so. It’ll be worth your while.
Pretty unlikley. You are talking $100-$200 watches here. That gets you a disposable mass produced watch.
Good engineering is possible at any price point. That is the nature of engineering. If the requirement is a $100 retail watch, you can get superb engineering. Within the budget. You won’t get a shred of craftsmanship. Manufactured in a large Asian factory most likely.
There are some very interesting Chinese mechanical watches that sell for stupidly low prices. They are pretty rough, but remain astounding value.
The very high end mechanical watches are at the cutting edge of precision production. NC controlled chemical milling and electro erosion is used on some. Otherwise you can also get what amounts to bespoke hand crafting. At serious money. Hundreds of hours by a Swiss watchmaker is not going to be cheap.
Although it is in the process of some change, the lower end of the Swiss industry is mostly derived from moments made by a very few companies - ETA, Valjoux (now officially part of ETA) - both owned by the Swatch Group. They also own Omega, Tissot, Longines, Breguet, Blancpain, and of course Swatch. The mechanical Swatch epitomised the ethic of high quality engineering in a cheap mass produced product. But to compare the absolute quality with the watches in the higher end of their portfolio is futile.
In many ways the success and continued growth of the mechanical watch is a rather nice example of people enjoying an arguably obsolete technology, but one where modern technologies continue to improve it, and articles of quite stunning beauty are produced. It was Douglas Adams, who observed in the THGTTG of primitive planets where the residents still thought that digital watches were cool. A life without such things as these watches being produced and appreciated is a life less rich. Sure lots of people are satisfied with their MacLifes, going to their MacJobs, living in their MacMansions, and wearing their MacWatches and eating Big Macs.
Mostly true, and the other thing to be aware of is that a there is a lot of marketing and promotional costs for those watches in the $2000-$3000 range. You can, if you look carefully, find watches that are as mechanically good and perhaps aesthetically better for a quarter of the price.
I speak as the proud owner of a Christopher Ward M5 Aviator. (thought mine is the Mk1 version with an exhibition back and tan alligator strap)
That would set you back around $400 and is easily the equal of a lower price bracket Rolex.
You know, if the idea is to appreciate the craftsmanship but you can’t actually see it since it’s sealed inside the casing, then it really isn’t much like a piece of art now is it? You have to appreciate it just based on the knowledge that it’s there. So how is that any better than knowing that your favorite piece of art is in a museum someplace? The fact that it’s on your wrist somehow makes it more real or immediate in some sense?
I think it’s really just an excuse to be ostentatious but in a way that isn’t obviously vulgar. I mean, I doubt that I would notice the difference between a patek Philippe and any other jewelry quality watch or even between a Rolex bought on Park ave and a Rowlex bought on Canal St. What it really does is advertise your socio-economic station to your peers while leaving the unwashed masses in the dark. Something which I assume adds to the thrill of owning such a device.
Personally, unless I were lighting my barbecue with a wad of hundreds dipped in 100 year old single malt scotch, I wouldn’t even consider buying something purely to advertise my status. If I were still in private practice and needed to impress clients, I would consider it, but purely as a business expense - and I would hope that I would be honest with myself about my motivations.
I was in Singapore in June and it wasn’t there then… I don’t recall seeing it in January, either. Which is a shame because it’s exactly the sort of shop I would love to spend lots of time in admiring small mechanical things worth more than a small house.
On a semi-related note, the Asians really do seem to be very keen on flash watches- Kuala Lumpur is full of shops selling quality watches; I counted at least four such places in one shopping mall alone. I saw several in Singapore, too.
One of my friends who’s spent a lot of time in Hong Kong explained that it’s because in a lot of affluent Asian cities (like Hong Kong), space is at a premium- so a wealthy person (or someone who wants to give off the appearance of wealth) can’t necessarily own a flash car (because there’s nowhere to park it and traffic moves at about 3km/h anyway), can’t own a big house (at least not anywhere near anything useful, like wherever the action is), and there’s only so many designer suits you can buy before you run out of wardrobe space (and- this is important- most of your contemporaries aren’t likely to notice the difference between an Expensive Italian Suit and a Really Very Expensive Italian Suit).
So, what can the wealthy professional do to flash their cash? Buy an incredibly expensive watch (or several)! Everyone knows that “Omega” and “Breitling” and “Rolex” are expensive brands, so the person wearing one obviously has a fair bit of cash if they can spend a couple of thousand dollars on a wristwatch- or at least, that’s the theory, apparently.
What you do have is a Swatch Group, Private Label watch. Notice the ETA movement. These watches are made by Swatch specifically for retailers to provide own brand branding, or for commemoration or publicity use. They use Swatch’s low end range of parts and manufacturing ability. As a rough comparison, it is the equivalent of a Tissot, and shares many parts with watches in the Tissot catalogue. In particular it is almost identical to a Tissot PR50 automatic. Same movement, and close specifications. It almost certainly came off the same production line. This watch retails for about $325 retail and discounted to $235 on Amazon. What it won’t be is nearly of the same quality as a Rolex. Note that it is made by the same company as owns Omega, and Breguet, and Swatch.
It is like many things in life. The cheap mass produced item is cheap in part because it is mass produced. The higher quality item escalates in price very quickly because it cannot be manufactured in bulk.
There are times when Amazon really annoys me. Ten minutes after I looked up the price of the Tissot watch above, I get spammed by Amazon selling cheap watches.
Just to alleviate any buyer’s remorse about the M5 Aviator - the movement is the same as the Tissot - but there are quite significant differences that can apply in the quality of the case, face, hands, strap, these can all be specified to any price and quality point by the private label customer, so the final specification of the watch may well be at a higher quality point than the simple PR50.
Anyone who hasn’t done so - before you try to compare looks feel and apparent quality - you need to actually handle the higher end watches. The level of finish quality, and quite obvious additional effort in manufacture isn’t something you can tell in a photograph or at a distance. Indeed some of it only become clear with reasonably close inspection.