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PaperclipPerfector
11hr ago
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Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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Does anyone like or collect watches? I never had much interest in them as an adult, especially after the cell phone explosion around my teens/20s made them mostly obsolete, but as I got older, I realized that it's an important piece of jewelry for the typical formal male outfit, and so I started wearing them again a couple years ago. First super-cheap quartz watches from Amazon, which can usually be found for $10-$20, then I found better automatic ones from AliExpress for $30-$300*.
Then, likely through motivated reasoning, it occurred to me that if AI takes off and everyday goods become crazy cheap, positional luxury goods that are expensive primarily because of the brand name could appreciate in value, so I actually bought a handful of automatics from well known brands for $500-$3,000, in the hopes that they'll appreciate in the next few years (also I liked the designs). If you know anything about watch prices, you know that that's not enough to get to the actual luxury luxury tier, so last weekend, I decided to step into a local Rolex boutique on a whim, and it was quite a bit of a culture shock.
I had to wait in line for 20 minutes just to get in, and then once I was in, a single salesman was assigned to me, ready to show me anything I wanted. He had me sit in a lounging area and offered me coffee while he collected the watches I wanted to check out. No price labels on any of them (I'm guessing it's a "if you have to ask how much it costs, then you can't afford it" situation - I had a rough idea that the cheapest would cost around $10K and was prepared to spend on that order of magnitude, but, if you know more about Rolex than I did at the time, you already know that I didn't spend that on that day). I was most interested in a black Submariner with date (basically the prototypical dive watch that every other manufacturer apes with their own dive watches), and the salesman told me that there was a 1-2-year wait list. By which time, given the progress of AI, I have no idea if I'll be alive, have a job, have enough money to afford one, or if Rolex will even be around. But I decided to give him my information and received an email. He recommended that I email him a reminder every month or two, which struck me as odd, given that queue technology is millennia old.
Doing some more research, it seemed that Rolex liked to make customers play games and jump through hoops to get them, which I suppose makes sense when you're the top name in the luxury [anything] space, since the exclusivity is part of the appeal of the brand, and there's no alternative that people can go to. But as a fairly non-/anti-social autist (not literally, but, you know), I kinda resented the notion that I had to socially butter up the salesman to be deserving of one of their products. So I'm not sure how much, if any, I'll follow up. In terms of investment potential, there doesn't seem to be any brand as low-risk as Rolex, but maybe I should just invest that money intelligently in the market instead. In the secondary market, like most fairly free markets, the appreciation is already priced in, so it's not really a great opportunity for making money. It'd also be nice to have a Rolex I could give to my future kid(s) to sell when they're middle-aged or senior citizens, since properly-taken-care-of vintage Rolexes seem to be valued highly, so giving them a pretty insurance policy that both I and they could get use out of in the meanwhile seems nice.
Anyway, now I'm in the hold phase of buy-and-hold and don't plan on buying any more expensive ones in the foreseeable future. We'll see if I end up with a bunch of worthless pretty bracelets or a nice profit soon enough, I suppose.
* Two brands popular on AliExpress (and present on Amazon) that tickled me were BiDen and Berny, for what should be obvious reasons. BiDen is cheap ($30-$100) and fairly mediocre in my experience, with a handful of automatic models that generally look pretty ugly, but I bought some just for the brand name. Berny (they claim to be named after Bern, Switzerland, where a Chinese watchmaker went to study watchmaking) is pricier ($90-$300) and has a large variety, including, like most Chinese manufacturers, lots of knockoffs of more expensive/famous brands. The quality of the ones I've bought seem good. I don't know if there's a Trump brand watch company, but I see a business opportunity here for some Chinese manufacturer.
I follow Nick Shabazz' sagely advice, so I own just a single watch. It's a Seiko SBPG001. Digital, retro-styled, with a stainless-steel body and a solar-powered battery. I should have bought some other one with a regular button battery, because the battery in it died and the authorized repair center in Moscow told me to fly to Tokyo if I wanted to replace it.
In terms of digital watches, I only have a bunch of cheap $5-$30 ones (as a recovering weeb, I enjoy the occasional $5 anime-branded Casio knockoff), along with a Casio G-Shock I got as a gift, I gotta say, that's one sexy-looking watch. I've been interested in getting a solar-powered digital watch, because I hate paying to replace batteries (though, it's not like automatics are any cheaper, in terms of regular maintenance - it's just that I can fool myself into ignoring the necessary maintenance with them), and I might look into that one.
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I like watches in that I have a couple of nice watches I wear if I'm dressing up. Both of them were gifts from my wife: one is a quartz Fossil she gave me for our first anniversary, the other is a mechanical Tissot she got me for my birthday one year. I generally use the Tissot if I wear a watch, as it's both more comfortable and I enjoy the craftsmanship and engineering which goes into a mechanical watch. I also have a pocket watch I like, though that obviously doesn't get as much use as a wristwatch.
I definitely don't collect watches, though. The three I have are more than enough for me. And I would never in a hundred years get a Rolex. I'm not interested in paying obscene prices to play silly status symbol games. Heck I wouldn't have even bought the Tissot that I have - at $800 it is way more than I would spend on a watch, and I made my wife promise to skip giving me Christmas presents that year when I found out how much it cost. Needless to say a Rolex or other luxury watch brand isn't something I would ever consider buying.
Tissot was actually the first "nice" watch I bought, on a whim at an airport jewelry shop while waiting for a flight. After taking my jaw off the floor at the watch prices, I zeroed in on the cheapest one and got a $200 quartz Dream Classic with Roman numerals (for which I'm a sucker) with a large 42mm dial, for the easy readability. I knew practically nothing about watches and mechanical vs automatic and whatnot back then, but I learned later that Tissot had a really good reputation as a Swiss brand for the sub-$1k market (that this is considered a "cheap niche" rather than "premium" is just... perhaps SNAFU is the right term). I bought another Tissot, a Le Locle (also with Roman numerals), at about $500 some time later, and I do like both of them. Very light and slim, and discreet.
As someone who rides a bus and subway most workdays of the week, I've certainly realized that I'm never going to regularly wear a real luxury watch or even "premium" watch, which is one reason among many that I've gravitated towards cheap Chinese knockoffs. Crime in my commute is pretty much not an issue, but the thought of having multiple $thousands taken off of me in a near-untraceable way triggers my paranoia quite a bit.
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Everything I know about watches (aka practically nothing) I learned from Paul Graham's recent post on the subject.
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It's kind of funny (and interesting) how Rolex has developed over the years, from a solid, reliable, hard-working brand associated with the military into a high-end bougie peice of artwork sold through high-pressure tactics.
Talking with my boss one day(ex-Naxy), he remarked that he had a watch he bought way back when that he can't wear simply due to insurance if he got it damanged/lost and wanted it replaced, and I immeadiately pegged it as a old Submariner.
Listening to some guys talk has turned me off Rolex before I could get any serious interest in it. If I was going for a high-price watch as a daily driver(assuming I had the money to spend), I'd probably be aiming for an Omega or Bulova(ie, the other moonwatch). Bulova actually put out a version of the watch where the face was a carved slice of meteor - I had to seriously hold myself back from doing something useless and stupid despite being really flipping cool.
Granted, I do like space. My one 'white whale' for a watch is Omega Speedmaster's 'Moon to Mars' - yeah, I'm not getting ahold of that anytime soon unless I get stupidly lucky.
If you want another watch rabbit hole to go down, look into Vostok - it's basically a USSR/Russian brand watch that has so many variations in terms of looks and facing it's hilariously awesome. Plus, a number of them are wind-up, which I like the appeal of.
Going to a Rolex boutique has certainly turned me off them. But it's probably just sour grapes for me not being high-enough status that Rolex doesn't just bring out the secret stash from the back for me. My money is just as good as fake Johnny Depp's, damnit! After that experience at Rolex, I've certainly started considering an Omega Speedmaster, but I haven't done enough research into them yet, as they seem to have a bunch of different models, and I don't know which ones have the proper lunar landing connections to be good for value speculation.
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I'm pretty sure I saw Trump do his own Trump-brand watches, which look, you know, how you would expect. The more reputable Chinese watch brand names in the single-digit-hundreds range generally have quite high quality like you've discovered. Right now for big-name Western brands, subjectively, you get what you pay for up to about 3-5k MSRP and after that you're paying for soft factors (such as willingness to put up with Rolex bullshit)
Hm, you're right. Its FAQ explains that they're actually sold by a company called TheBestWatchesOnEarth LLC, which I'm absolutely shocked is not an actual Trump company, and which licenses the Trump name and brand and everything. The first 3 types of watches listed for Men's are: Fighter, Warrior, and Mugshot Suit. As always, Trump proves un-parody-able.
I haven't had any of them long enough to say, but that's certainly been my experience so far, from a few I've bought in the $70-$300 range from Chinese brands Tandorio, Berny, Addiesdive, and San Martin. San Martin is the most expensive of those, and I just had to get one of their watches which featured Chinese characters for the numbers, which I haven't been able to find in any other brand, not even other Chinese brands. I bought a few from Tandorio with customized engravings (and one with customized dial) since even with the customization they came out to the $120-$250 range, and I just hope they're made well enough to last long enough that I'm capable of feeling nostalgia for the reasons for the customizations. I'll probably turn to them for gifts every once in a while for my male relatives/friends.
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Don't know much about watches, but based on my careful study of /r/watchescirclejerk, try giving the AD a charcuterie board and a night with your wife if you want to get the call earlier. If you want the privilege to exchange funds for goods you need to go the extra mile.
I don't think your kids would much care for a watch.
If I'm fortunate enough to survive as a POW or at least have a close friend of mine survive as a POW instead of being turned into a goop of chemical bonds for fuelling AI killbots in the coming robot wars, I certainly don't plan on sticking anything up my ass just to keep it. Then again, if I demand my wife bite the bullet (or rather not bite anything, unless the AD's into that) to help secure such an artifact for our child, perhaps I should be willing to at least carry a hunk of metal in my ass for a few years. I don't expect to have any friends nearly as cool as Christopher Walken, though.
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