The frenzied world of rare watches

Again like you said, the reason not to wear is nothing specific to watches. At the high end of collectibles markets, condition grading is extremely fine and detailed. A knowledgeable person can see the difference between something that has never left the box and something that was used/worn once. Additionally, there's often a substantial value difference between a #1 condition item and a #2 condition item. As the participants in any collector market become more sophisticated, condition difference between individual items becomes both more legible (as grading methods are created) and has a greater effect on value (as the market expands).

There's also a sort of status game being described in the part you quoted. Self-identified collectors/dealers intentionally don't wear their collection in order to signal their understanding of the watches' value and therefore their own knowledge as connoisseurs.

They went on to buy a 130k market value watch for 30k (retail) or something

>>So I really like mechanical watches but I've kind of lost interest because it's nigh-on impossible to buy anything new (unless you're a high net worth individual)

As a sanity/reality check, I think we really really need to distinguish "Mechanical Watch" (which can be gotten for as low as $25USD for a crappy cheap but functional and self-winding mechanical piece), and "Rolex" :->

I wore exclusively mechanical watches for most of my life, starting with a Rolex I inherited from my dad in the mid-80s.

When he bought it, Rolex wasn't yet as insanely upmarket as they've become. It was kind of the obvious token of upper-middle-class success of the era. Dad's is the two-tone DateJust on what Rolex calls a "Jubilee" bracelet, and you've seen the color scheme and overall look on a million knock-off Citizens and Seikos.

Rolex SAYS you're supposed to service these annually, but even when I wore it daily I didn't do that. I think it's been serviced maybe 3 or 4 times since I've had it; aside from a replaced mainspring a few years back, it runs fine and keeps time as good as any mechanical. That's kind of the appeal of Rolex, or at least it was in the 60s and 70s: they're VERY VERY robust, so you especially see them on wrists of successful people in jobs that would be hard on a less robust watch. (Thinks chefs, or contractors, or -- like my dad -- veterinarians.)

I had a good dot-com era and bought a couple of my own, but nothing in precious metals or super expensive. And then, a few years ago, I was training for a half marathon and wanted a running device with GPS. I ended up with a gen-1 Apple Watch, and the damn thing was so HANDY that I upgraded to a fancier (steel, sapphire crystal) model for Series 3, and now I almost never wear the fancy mechanicals. I still LOVE them -- it's very cool that humans figured out how to keep time using springs and gears! -- but for day to day wear, it's almost always the Apple now.

Re: built for a purpose, I think a lot of folks today just see Rolex as a luxury brand, but when Sean Connery walked out of the waves in Dr No wearing a Rolex, it was because it was precisely the sort of robust, fault-tolerant timepiece a super-spy WOULD wear. Moreover, back then, they weren't NEARLY so expensive. Rolex's prices have drastically outpaced inflation FOR SURE.

I had thought I'd buy a Subbie, too, but even at the turn of the century they had gotten a bit nuts. I opted for a Seamaster instead, at HALF the price.

>I can pass it down to my kiddo

As I noted uptopic, my first fancy watch was a 1970s Rolex I inherited from MY dad. Someone will inherit it from me. My friend C. has his grandfather's steel Rolex; his son will inherit that one.

That's a nice thing about mechs you can't really get out of electronics.