Why Luxury Watches Are More Expensive Than Regular Watches
Hello, a Luxor's! In previous videos, we've spoken all about some of the most luxurious watch brands in the world and some of the most expensive timepieces they've produced. But what makes them so expensive? What drives up the cost of these wrist frostings to so much higher than your high street brands? Welcome to a Luxe Calm, the place where future billionaires come to get inspired. If you're not subscribed yet, you're missing out!
Well, as a Luxor's with an eye for luxury, we know you'll be in the market for one of these classy timepieces in the future. We've done the homework, so you don't have to. Here are 10 reasons why luxury watches are so much more expensive than regular watches.
Number one: Great craftsmanship doesn't go out of fashion. When considering a luxury watch purchase, you aren't hoping to be the first in line with a seasonal trend. The main motivation is to buy a piece of wearable classic precision engineering. It certainly isn't a flight of fancy, but a long-term investment in style. Unlike a new BMW, luxury watch brands don't devalue the moment you take them out of the shop. In fact, they increase in value with age. While flipping classic watches isn't the motivation for most buyers, heritage manufacturers aren't selling you the promise of future value but rather the prestige and ingenuity of what the watch is right now.
Number two: It's not how you start, it's how you finish. Luxury watches are produced with a very different business model in mind than your fast fashion items. They're not interested in increasing production output and cutting corners to save a few dollars per item. This type of rushed work leads to less detail and less handcrafted finesse in the finishes. To the trained eye of a discerning luxury watch aficionado, the devil is in the details. From start to finish, a luxury watch shows all of the signs of its value in its finishes. You won't find mass machine heated details on the hands; to achieve the blued effect, watchmakers employ electroplating or hand painting on each part of the luxury watch face. Materials of facts are also on a different level. A less luxurious watch might boast calf leather for its strap, but a luxury watch strap will be made of alligator leather or something more exotic and far more luxurious.
Number three: Quartz movements are so passe. Mechanical watches require winding, while quartz watches are powered by an electronic motor powered with an electric current that moves through a quartz crystal. When quartz was first introduced in the 1970s, it all but ruined the Swiss watch market. The Swiss brand Swatch was formed and supplied quartz-driven watches, becoming the largest watch company in the world. But as the quartz craze dies down, the luxury market is on the increase as luxury lovers go back to the basics of the joy of mechanics in great watchmaking.
Number four: Posh power reserve. Of course, the reason quartz just seems so practical is that for months, even years, your watch will keep time without you needing to give it a second thought. At the time, this kind of novelty appealed to the masses who were embracing a more technological way of life. Until this point, the only way to know your watch needed to be wound was that it stopped or wasn't keeping time. But these days, watchmakers have added a power reserve indicator feature to their watches to show watch users how long until the next wind is needed. Brands like Panerai or BLOW have watches that boast the ability to run for eight to fifty days off a single wind, so a power reminder is a great addition. If you'd like to know some more about brands like BLOW, be sure to watch our video all about them.
Number five: You're paying for years of design and knowledge. Attention to detail and design doesn't come by disassembling a competitor's watch and sourcing parts, suppliers, and production staff to put it back together at a lower price. In fact, price and competition have little place in the design of an exquisitely crafted timepiece. The craft of watchmaking requires ingenuity, refinement, and attention to detail, far from the qualities afforded to a mass-produced product. These are not skills one acquires overnight but rather over a lifetime of passionate watchmaking. A watch like the Black Paul 1735 Grande Complication contains 740 handmade parts, each part expertly fitted by one of the 70 employees who individually add their expertise to each timepiece. Not one watch will look identical, as polishing, chamfering, and graining are all done by hand. The bulk expense when purchasing a luxury watch is the thousands of days and weeks before where the watchmaker honed the skills and invented new and more enchanting complications than the last. Artisans in this field will have to train for more than a decade before the top watchmakers will let them start producing items for sale.
Number six: No luxury is spared in the materials. Like we previously mentioned, corner cutting is not the culture when it comes to luxury watches. Watchmakers look to add the most premium and luxurious finishes they can think of when completing a timepiece. Gold, diamonds, and mother-of-pearl are not afterthoughts played on later but are solid pieces engineered into the design. The Graff Diamonds Hallucination is frosted with 110 carats of rare diamonds and fetched a price of 55 million dollars for this once-off watch. If you want to see just how much bling can go into luxury watches, check out our video about the top 10 most expensive watches in the world for a quick summary.
Number seven: Small runs mean high costs. Just like fashion brands such as Supreme, there's a strong culture of limited runs in watchmaking. This gives the market only a small chance of scooping up a coveted watch, which drives up the price. In 1991, if you wanted to buy a Rolex Daytona, you'd have to add your name to a six-year waiting list. A frenzy had been created after Rolex stopped production on the Daytona for three years, and upon returning, it was a bun fight for the watch. A watchmaker like BOVET only produces 2000 watches a year, and Patek Philippe, with 180 years of watchmaking behind them, have made less than a million watches in total. Making small runs means much higher overheads because there's no production line in the process, and handmade limits the amount of units you can push out on any day. Scaling production and maintaining the type of quality standards that they do is just not possible. The more intricate a design, the longer it takes to make, plus all this anticipation and waiting certainly lends to the feeling that the $100,000 price tag is worth it.
Number eight: A single new movement feature can take years to develop. Like the hands on a watch, you can't rush the process of engineering a new watch feature or complication, as they're correctly referred to. The process is highly involved, often being passed down from one watchmaker to the next. If they're unable to solve the challenge in their lifetime, the challenge continues to build. Each part is smaller and thinner to be able to place more complications into a watch, and there's no end as to how accurate each part can perform, shaving micro-nanoseconds off of discrepancies. Once the movement is finally perfected, it's placed into a watch that has a limited run. All those hours of work must be added to the price tag to make it a worthwhile venture for the watchmakers.
Number nine: How do you value gravity? One of the greatest challenges in watchmaking is the effect of gravity on timekeeping, and that's where the tourbillon comes in. The word means whirlwind in French, but in watchmaking, it's an ingenious device invented to limit the impact of gravity on the watch's hairspring. A tourbillon contains 40 parts making up this one component. The cheapest Swiss manufactured watch with a tourbillon was the 2016 Tag Heuer Carrera Hoyer 02; the watch sold for $15,000.
Number ten: Complexity is everything. In a world where lines are getting cleaner and parts are being streamlined and automated, the watchmaking fraternity continues in the opposite direction. The more complex the moving parts, the more mechanical the processes, the more valued the watch. As each part is crafted and placed with absolute precision to function in an exact way, there are no computers to counter-correct and no fail-safes to pick up the slack. It's sheer mechanical genius. Complications or features like perpetual calendars, phases of the moon, perpetual chronographs, and chiming mechanisms all have to be perfectly constructed to work year in and year out. There are even complications that consider leap years. For most of us, the marvels of this ingenuity are far too profound to understand, so we are happy to pay the big bucks to a watchmaker for the convenience handle.
Here we are at the end! When you're spending on luxury items, what are the most important elements to you, and what's your most recent luxury splurge? Let us know in the comments!
And for sticking with us until the end, here's your bonus! When you think of a watch alarm, you probably think of high-pitched beep-beep sounds. But the sounds that you can expect from a luxury watch are far more refined. The chimes they produce have a warm brassy tone, like a clock tower bell being struck in the distance. The most expensive watch sold at auction was in a class of its own when it came to chimes. The Grandmaster Chime was produced by Patek Philippe in 2014 to mark the watchmaker’s 175th anniversary. The watch contained 20 complications made up of 1366 movement components. It featured a perpetual calendar, a minute repeater, a face for a second time zone, and a leap year cycle. But the crème de la crème was the esoteric chiming mechanism. They sound like the most pure and beautiful chimes you could imagine, far from the maddening drone of a digital beep. If that's music to your ears, hopefully, the sound of the price tag of 31 million dollars rings just as beautifully!
This watch took 100,000 hours to make over the course of 7 years, and it became the most expensive watch to ever be sold at auction. Thank you for spending some time with us, a Luxor's! Make sure to LIKE and subscribe so you never miss another video. We also hand-picked these videos which we recommend you watch next. You can talk to us on all social media or ask a question on our website, alux.com. Thank you for being an A Luxor, and we'll see you back tomorrow!