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Looking to unlock my DMs pls...walter says hi
Additional Posts in Luxury Watches
Great for the office, great for an afternoon hike.
Happy Sunday, watch lovers.
Happy St. Paddy’s day - finally got this!
This might be my new daily. 36mm is so comfy.
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Chief
Desirability is largely tied to style, popularity, rarity.
Different people have different tastes and it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad style or not. For instance, the Nautilus and Daytona are arguably the two most sought after models in the world right now. My style sense however does not understand the Nautilus at all while I absolutely love the Daytona.
The most on trend stuff seems to be mid sized (39-42mm) steel sports watches. Small watches (36mm and below) are not on trend and the big watch trend 44+ seems to have fizzled out. Regardless of overall trends, wear the watch that fits you, e.g., if you have 8.5” wrists, don’t shy away from bigger watches because they aren’t on trend.
This is an amazing response, I appreciate you taking the time to do so, thanks
Chief
OP still ain’t post the watch, huh
Post the watch.
Chief
OP, watch geeks love gawking at watches, that’s why we want you to share.
To add to EY1’s good post on desirability, I’d point out that watches are among a relatively small group of consumer goods that are really engineered to last the test of time - you’re unlikely to pass down a TV or phone or even a car to your child, because current examples just won’t last that long before they’re either outdated or don’t work anymore. This helps explain also why the trends in high end watches are slow-moving. Larger watches were in vogue for a brief period, but the market is trending back in the 39-42mm sweet spot that EY1 mentioned.
Mechanical movements (either automatic or manually wound) are generally favored in luxury watches for longevity and appreciation of the engineering and craftsmanship. There are luxury quartz watches, but for the most part, those are either women’s watches or entry-level for men. The bulk of the men’s luxury watch market is automatic watches, a subset that utilize manually-wound models. One thing that’s in vogue at the moment is the in-house movement, which were designed by the company that made the watch. Take the $2500 Tag Heuer Calibre 5 Aquaracer - the Calibre 5 movement is, in fact, a movement assembled by Tag that’s based on the ETA 2824. You can get a Hamilton Khaki Field Automatic for $500 that has the same base movement - sure, each company made some minor changes, and the watch construction on the Tag is likely a bit better, but is it $2000 better? You can get a Tudor or Nomos with a movement completely designed and assembled in-house in the $3000 range.
This isn’t to say that there’s anything wrong with ETA or ETA-based movements - they’re much easier and cheaper to service, and will still last a very long time - but their value proposition starts to decline as price increases, particularly in the area north of $1500-2000.