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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'm surprised to see this entire discussion of watches pass by without a single reference to smartwatches. I understand that you're significantly influenced by the idea of a watch as an investment piece... But i feel like it's are least worth mentioning that we do still have a class of watches designed primarily for functionality. My Garmin Fenix coming in handy literally every day. And while the design perhaps isn't up to rolex standards, a smartwatch is still its own type of social signal. Given how often I see them worn by high-earning men in IT leadership, I associate them with what we in the business call "technical leadership." I.E., the management-class people who's eyes don't glaze over when you start to explain some esoteric about how an SQL variant works.
The main downside of course is the depreciation... But I really don't think watches are the best anti-AI hedge in any case. Watches buy you social status and (maybe) utility. They're not going to outperform land with mineral rights or magic the gathering cards as items of exchange with the post AI nobility.
I've heard it said that the most popular watch in the world is the Apple Watch, and it seems believable. So perhaps, in the future, when people say "watch," they'll think of mini-tablets with a strap for the wrist, like how when people say "phone" now, we think of a mini-tablet with a cell connection, not something attached to the wall with a keypad or a rotary thingy. But if they're really that popular, I feel like it's hard for them to signal anything. I think Apple Watches are square or rectangular, versus many other Android smartwatches having round faces, so perhaps having a round-faced smartwatch will signal being a tech leader-type. Though, since they're not that expensive, it could just signal being a nerdy Android-type in general.
I personally don't like smartwatches, primarily because I personally don't get value out of having notifications available on my watch rather than my phone. And also because they require much more maintenance than dumbwatches - you need to charge them multiple times a week, if not every day. A trivial inconvenience, but an inconvenience nonetheless. That said, I did buy a cheap $10 smartwatch from AliExpress, because smartwatches offer 2 obvious huge advantages in terms of use and looks: since they sync with a phone, they always have very accurate time, and since their dials are actually fully functional LCD screens, they have near-infinite flexibility in terms of the look. Unfortunately, the cheap one I bought doesn't actually offer that near-infinite flexibility and only allows you to download from some set of dial designs they have, which number in the hundreds, but that's basically zero compared to the possibility space. I use it primarily for just setting the time of my other watches when I don't want to take my phone out of my pocket and open the clock app.
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