Rolex have innovated consistently with their movements and oyster cases, and their manufacturing quality is amazing. Their business practices are questionable though, as the article highlights. I can walk into an AD today and walk out with a Grand Seiko Snowflake. Contrast this with a Rolex AD who will put me on a “waiting list”, even though I’ve purchased from them before and own a few Rolex watches.
Sibling sohc* - looks like your comment is dead. Pointing it out because it didn't seem that bad and this looks abnormal for your history. Maybe one of the words you used?
Okay, call them unnecessary status symbols for people to show their wealth. See also fancy cars, gaudy diamond rings. They are kind of in that category.
Profoundly ugly. But these fancy watches have moved into speculative investment territory, like sneakers or bitcoin. I get the feeling that patek is trying to reel in rubes with money that think that they can make money by buying and reselling one of these, instead of buying a fancy watch for being a watch.
Patek make beautiful watches, that run for decades, so its especially sad to see them chasing ugly bucks like this. Oh well.
This is silly. Their movements are among the most accurate out there, putting watch movements by other highly esteemed brands like Patek Philippe to shame
I'm no expert but my recollection from last time I was looking into buying a watch is that quartz watches are 1-2 orders of magnitude more accurate than even top-end mechanical watches.
Yes, this is true, but almost no luxury watch is quartz (unless you count Seiko spring drive which is hybrid quartz/mechanical). So when people compare e.g. Rolex and Patek movements they are comparing mechanical to mechanical.
It's like saying your Tesla has better 0 to 100 kph acceleration than a 70s Aston Martin V8. The answer is "so what?". You're not driving an Aston Martin V8 for the best acceleration, or the gas mileage, or suspensions, or the ease of maintenance. You buy it because it kicks and roars and slips and smells...
Now you're just making stuff up instead of doing a simple Google search. Regular Seikos (ie a Seiko 5) can expect around +-20 sec per day. Same with Orient and similar brands that use very cheap automatic movements. Rolex watches often do better than +-2sec per day. If you think the difference between the two is marketing you are either engaging in sophistry or painfully uninformed.
This is the classic Rolex fan. Sort of brainwashed and clueless while insulting to others. Both spring drives and grands are more accurate than Rolexes. Beyond that who even cares. If you want accuracy certainly don’t get a mechanical watch.
If you meant Seikos high end products you should have said those, no one calls Grand Seikos just Seiko since they are very different. With that in mind I don't think we disagree very much here.
Collectors of Rolexes live in a bizarre netherworld where their watches aren’t mass produced machine made. This isn’t even a secret it’s openly stated. It made of few to no precious materials and is engineering a problem (time keeping) that has been solved in a variety of ways already to super accuracy.
The reality is that a microscopically accurate replica can be made for 300$ in china. This isn’t true for A Lange or FP Journe, yet somehow people act like Rolex is unobtanium.
They are simply the same as an LVMH canvas bag. Objects of desire because they are expensive and have no other unique features. I could get into details like how a blue hairspring is not that special or their movements are fine but nothing outstanding. But most don’t want to go that deep.
Think of it like Bose. They sound good to someone who hasn’t heard anything else good.
Idk, if you decide you want a mechanical dive watch, just by the stats, a Sub Date is under 13mm thick, +2/-2 accuracy, made of hard materials, ceramic, sapphire, and steel alloy (no coating so it can be polished), price after purchase is only going to go up.
I don’t own a Rolex, don’t want to spend that much, invite the crime, or care about the status, but I really would like for Seiko (or another value brand) to step up and offer something comparable.
No you can go into a lot of details of how Apple engineers its cases to its proprietary M chips to technically prove their value. You can also point out value integrations in software. This isn’t a Veblen good and iPhone is very much a measurable utility.
Have you heard of the women who would not date men using an Android phone, as well as the kids being pressured or excluded? In some social circles Apple devices are definitely status symbols.
