What is the point of spending so much money on a watch?
“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.
There has long been elegance and prestige associated with a fine watch made with precious metals and jewels. Originally, finely crafted, precision mechanical timepieces also served a serious need in accurate timekeeping needed to facilitate travel and communications across moderate to significant distances.
But now, technology has made it possible to have an accurate wristwatch as the free toy in a fast-food kid’s meal.
Yet the aspects of watches as fine functional jewelry with poetic and nostalgic ties to their origins remain. I’m sure others can better describe and explain the value people find in owning and wearing fine jewelry.
What it really boils down to is this: any wristwatch over US $200 is more jewelry than a timepiece.
So forget about evaluating such items by adding up the cost of components, factoring in the value of precious metals or imagining some supreme value hidden in the mechanism inside.
That takes you on a slippery slope to the insanity of people who argue over technical specifications they don’t truly understand, trying to intellectually justify wristwatch values for technical and logical reasons that hold little, if any, tangible merit or benefit.
Since an inexpensive quartz watch will look fine on your wrist and tell you the time accurately, there is no real functional value to paying more for a watch.
Choosing a timepiece that accomplishes the same function using a more complicated older mechanical technology, a premium quartz technology that is marginally more precise, in a casing with highly refined detailing or of precious metal.
A timepiece bearing the design hallmarks of a famous maker are all values that exist only to bring personal and intellectual satisfaction and enjoyment. In other words, jewelry value.
The truth is that the value of jewelry is entirely emotional. Any penny spent over $200 on the price of a watch is buying you only more jewelry value and greater emotional satisfaction in having something more unique–nothing more.