Horological Meandering

anaesdoc
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"Felt" consent

Dear Steve,

I am no expert in the watch business nor in watch making, just a dedicated amateur attracted by these lovely little wrist marvels. I do not possess high-end watches like some of the folks around here, just plain, simple timepieces. So I cannot judge your statement on a rational basis, but my "tummy" tells me you hit some real issues.

1. Prices: really exploding (even in the medium range sector like Omega, Rolex, Sinn, Stowa), but - hey - they can charge you only as much as the customers are willing to pay. Obviously there are enough customers who (still?) can and will!

2. Sales channels: I only bought a VC at an AD with a very moderate courtesy once and lost a lot of money when selling the immaculate watch 3 years later. I will not do that again. So-called grey market dealers offer the same watches for better prices or a second-hand watch is an alternative.

3. "Soul": hard to grip intellectualy, isn´t it? So here I feel a bit more comfortable with my feelings . I am a fan of vintage Omegas which I simply prefer a lot to the contemporary ones: too big, too bulky, too impersonal, too expensive. The old ones are more decent, classic and my watchmaker tells me the movements´ quality of the 1950-1960s does not have to hide from modern Omega movements. Whatever co-axial escapement, silicium hairspring, column wheel control etc. may mean as a technical improvement, my vintage Seamaster with manual wind runs +10 secs a day and costed me only a fraction of these high-tech watches. The unobtrusiveness of these ancient watches is a main attribute that a lot of the current models seem to fear. They are crying for superlatives, records, first-in-history achievements which result in an "it-was-done-because-it-has-not-been-done-before attitude". Some things have never been done before - and nobody will ever miss them !

One thing stroke me when reading the comments to your post: those who obviously feed the boom - the Chinese, Indians, Arabs, Russians or whoever does not care about spending huge sums - do not seem to linger about this site, most people are from the traditional (and uninteresting?) old world, i.e. America, Western Europe. So probably we are discussing the topic, but it does not really matter in sales figures for the brands?

Kind regards and thanks for bringing up your points!

anaesdoc

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