mechanical watches whats the point?

[Larsb]

Hi Willy,

Are we taken advantage of by greedy businessmen? Constantly. Is it just when we buy expensive watches? No. Just to stay in the watchworld: If you by a fashion accessory watch, you can easily pay in excess of 1000 kr for a quartz watch in a crap case where the 'gold' peel off in no time. But that's the thing about fashion, it's not meant to last so who cares? Fashion articles are almost always overpriced.

Back to the watches and what is handmade. To some it is probably important that a watch is handmade. If a watch brand produces hundreds of thousands watches, the likelyhood of a small army of watchmakes hand-assembling them is slim, unless you are talking about a Chinese factory. They still might make a small amount of high quality watches which are hand assembled to keep up their reputation as a luxury watch brand with hand assembled watches, just like a lot of companies have a few watches with inhouse movements, while the majority of their production is equipped with ETA standard movements.

It’s all down to what you think you are paying for. If you take Rolex or Omega, you not just pay for a watch, you pay for a name and a history. Some people want to pay for that. Others want something that is hand assembled. Some people want a fashion accessory.

I can only speak for myself in regards to what I’m looking for in a watch and sometimes I don’t’ even know myself, as I tried to express in an earlier post about Rolex. I currently have 3 modern watches.

My Panerai have a standard Unitas movement, nicely finished some parts might even be assembled by humans. The overall finish of the watch is good, but first and foremost it is a big and robust watch. I wanted a boig and robust watch and the Panerai slow grew on me until I had to have it. Even though it is ‘cheapest’ of the 3, then yes, it is overpriced seen from a movement point of view, but I still love it and I haven’t regretted paying the price.

I’ve been to Glashütte and seen that the watches are actually assembled by hand. It was fascinating to see and it is a important part of why I love GO watches. All their movements are inhouse and the majority of the components are produced inhouse. Is it worth the price? Yes, I think so. Seeing how much work that goes into producing it. Sure, GO still makes a good profit but watchmaking is not an altruistic enterprise.

Rainer Nienaber uses old ebauches from A.Schild as a base for his retrograde movements. I don’t’ know much about his production but I doubt that he produces enough watches to have them machine assembled. The case is a standard product and honestly not that interesting, whereas the dial is his own little work of art. Is a watch with a standard case, modified ebauch and original dial worth a significant amount of money? I think so as it is produced in small quantities by real people and, judging from correspondence with Mr. Nienaber, produced with passion.

That was my penny worth of insane rambling.