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Confessions of a Watch Geek

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Re: Confessions of a Watch Geek

#21

Post by hanklazard »

ericcholis wrote: post #15

The reddit/r/watches community is pretty active with a wide range of watches (automatic and fashion). Good resources to find quality watches and avoid marketing hype. I admit, I love the smooth movement of the second hand on an automatic watch. My sister-in-law got me my first automatic and I thought it was broken....until I put it on. They are tiny feats of precision engineering, even the cheap ones. I'm partial to…

Agreed on Reddit as a good resource for watches. For opportunities to purchase, I'd recommend /r/watchexchange ... I've spent way more money there than I'd like to admit!

Re: Confessions of a Watch Geek

#23

Post by tsunamifury »

Watches have become a bit like horses or combustion cars might become in a few years -- items that have lost most of their practical value attached to industries that need to focus on higher and higher prices in order to inflate their veblen good status.

I enjoy watches, especially mechanical ones, and a bit of the marketing and story behind them, but even as a upper income individual, I find their prices to be completely unabsorbable.

Rolexes and Omegas start at 8000 and their second hand market has become just as artificially inflated. An Audemars steel watch starts at 13k! These are impractical prices for all but the very wealthy and betray the working class value that their origin stories rely on.

But what I find really fascinating is the Chinese replica market, which now can make nearly identical watches at almost 1/100 the cost. Does the fact that you can own a completely identical Rolex for just 500 dollars not call into question the swiss market veblen good strategy?

I predict a significant crash in sales forcing some of the brands out of business and maybe inspiring a few to make a real middle class watch. But it's a powerful lesson that China can now manufacture even the most "hallowed" quality to practically the same degree.

Re: Confessions of a Watch Geek

#24

Post by smcl »

rhaps0dy wrote: post #22

> receipt for $4,137.25 [...] by my own standards I had just thrown away a small chunk, roughly 4.3 writing days, of my independence Wow, this person earns a lot by writing o.O

Yep - I thought this (and the "I own and collect fancy watches...") was a bit of a humblebrag - but then supposed that writers likely make a decent living overall but their income might be concentrated into smaller super-busy periods.

Re: Confessions of a Watch Geek

#25

Post by LyndsySimon »

icantdrive55 wrote: post #13

I collect, and repair watches. I usually like stories about watches, and the people who cherish them, but not today. I'm just in a weird mood? This popped out, and made me cringe: "Mechanical watches are far less accurate than quartz watches, but often far more expensive, because their bearings are more intricate. All contemporary Rolex watches, for example, are mechanical." 1. They are not more expensive because of…

This is an awesome post, thank you :)

> There something very gratifying about resurrecting an old watch found on eBay.

I completely understand this; it's how I feel about fountain pens. I've bought dozens - maybe hundreds - of old crusty fountain pens on eBay, Craigslist, and from antique stores. They're fairly easy to repair, but often require a good deal of patience to get apart and clean. Once they're back together and working again after decades of neglect, it's almost like they come alive.

Re: Confessions of a Watch Geek

#26

Post by hanklazard »

loydb wrote: post #12

I love that Nomos was featured heavily. I don't own one yet, but they are for sure my favorite manufacturer.

I recently bought a Rodina watch, which is a Chinese company that makes "homage" watches to the Bauhaus school (ie. Nomos). The style is so simple that it can easily be copied. Anyway, if you have any interest in "trying out" the Nomos look on your wrist for a while before spending a couple of thousand on the real thing, I think it's a great option. I personally found that I never really bonded with Bauhaus, so I sold the Rodina ... kept the stakes really low to play in the hundred dollar range rather than the 2-3K$ range.

Re: Confessions of a Watch Geek

#27

Post by hanklazard »

professorumbra wrote: post #17
huhtenberg wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mid-to-high-end watch market (in the $1K-50K range) is going through a _major_ crisis right now. For past several years they've been aggressively raising prices due to steady Chinese demand, which now has been all but extinguished by a combination of several factors. So the watchmakers are now is a pickle of situation - watches are massively over-priced, their "normal" customers are well aware of that, but they c…

Interesting. It seems that the luxury image is more a burden than an advantage to many manufacturers. But the brand ownership is concentrated and the owners might not care about those kind of difficulties. I'm more of a fan of utilitarian watches anyways. Sinn for example makes very affordable tool watches that are also technologically on par with many luxury brands.

Yeah, Sinn is a great brand and probably in a price range that seems more sane than some of the entry level Rolex, Panerai, JLC, etc. I have a Sinn 556i and it is probably one of my favorite watches. As much as I don't want to have two Sinn's out of principle, the 104 is also a gorgeous watch.

Another point about Sinn is that they use pretty standard movements, like the ETA 2824, which could easily be swapped out or serviced by most any watchmaker--it's this ease of servicing that is making me think twice about moving up into some of the more expensive Swiss/German pieces with unique in-house movements. For those reading this who are not familiar with mechanical watch service costs, fancier Swiss watches like AP and others can cost 1500$ or more just for the watch equivalent of a "tune-up."

Re: Confessions of a Watch Geek

#28

Post by semi-extrinsic »

tsunamifury wrote: post #23

Watches have become a bit like horses or combustion cars might become in a few years -- items that have lost most of their practical value attached to industries that need to focus on higher and higher prices in order to inflate their veblen good status. I enjoy watches, especially mechanical ones, and a bit of the marketing and story behind them, but even as a upper income individual, I find their prices to be compl…

As I understand it, the Chinese replica market buys essentially all their movements as genuine goods from Japanese manufacturers like Seiko. The movements (i.e. the really complicated parts to make) for expensive quartz watches cost less than $50. So the Chinese don't have to replicate the tricky part, they just have to build a mechanical case from mineral or sapphire glass and stainless steel that's pressure tight to (usually) 10 or 20 bar, and fit a strap to it.

(I'm wearing a sub-$50 Parnis flyback chronograph as I type this.)

Re: Confessions of a Watch Geek

#29

Post by falcolas »

tsunamifury wrote: post #23

Watches have become a bit like horses or combustion cars might become in a few years -- items that have lost most of their practical value attached to industries that need to focus on higher and higher prices in order to inflate their veblen good status. I enjoy watches, especially mechanical ones, and a bit of the marketing and story behind them, but even as a upper income individual, I find their prices to be compl…

For better or worse the cost of skilled human labor, particularly someone trained as a watchmaker, is damned expensive. Supply and demand.

Can you get a similar, and perhaps even better constructed (machines are, after all, more precise than humans) watch from China? Sure. Is it the same watch? No.

These watches are luxury items - a status symbol. They are the Rolls Royce of watches: built by hand, damned expensive, and worth every penny to those who buy them.

Of course, if you prefer the watch from China, then more power to you. I prefer my Dodge car over a Rolls Royce as well; I don't need or want a symbol, just a good car.

Re: Confessions of a Watch Geek

#30

Post by tsunamifury »

falcolas wrote: post #29
tsunamifury wrote: post #23

Watches have become a bit like horses or combustion cars might become in a few years -- items that have lost most of their practical value attached to industries that need to focus on higher and higher prices in order to inflate their veblen good status. I enjoy watches, especially mechanical ones, and a bit of the marketing and story behind them, but even as a upper income individual, I find their prices to be compl…

For better or worse the cost of skilled human labor, particularly someone trained as a watchmaker, is damned expensive. Supply and demand. Can you get a similar, and perhaps even better constructed (machines are, after all, more precise than humans) watch from China? Sure. Is it the same watch? No. These watches are luxury items - a status symbol. They are the Rolls Royce of watches: built by hand, damned expensive,…

My question was more at the level of "What if you could buy a Rolls Royce from China that was in ever way, practically identical and cost as much as your Dodge?" What would that do to the car market?
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