It’s quite a manipulation of the market. Rolex does make fine quality timepieces, but like so much else in the luxury market, they’re priced further and further from realistic valuations. Seriously, they produce over a million new watches each year. How long can the market continue to absorb all that unless it’s artificial scarcity?
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That is a handsome looking watch 
@hastur Yeah, who needs a designer label, when your clock is freakin’ atomic! 
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The function of a Rolex is not to tell time but to tell others that you are wealthy enough to afford one.
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True. But it also does tell the time, pretty darn reliably, and is overall durable and very well-crafted piece of high-precision engineering.
Mechanical watches are one of the few technologies that are fully mature. (Razors are another: a safety razor w. standardized razor blade is basically as good as it gets.) You can add complications and guilloche decoration and so on, but the mechanism is essentially perfected.
I would totally buy and wear a Rolex (not one of the really ostentatious ones; I really like the Milgauss) if I had the money.
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But so do many watches for less than a hundred bucks.
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1% problems
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Yeah, until the battery dies. I don’t understand the ‘I don’t bother with a watch, I’ve got my phone’ thing, there are plenty of occasions when using a phone would be impractical, if not downright annoying and antisocial, like in a cinema. Plus, trying to drag a phone out of a pocket when just a glance at your wrist is just daft.
But then, I’ve been wearing a watch continuously for around sixty years, and I look at my watch even if I’ve got my phone in my hand.
Back on topic, I’ve never wanted a Rolex, and the insanity around their watches now just repels me.
The first watch I ever bought with my own, earned money, was a Yema Rallygraf Super, which I bought around 1971, and paid £50 for it. (The cheaper Rallygraf was famously worn by Mario Andretti when he was in Formula One), mine had a mainspring replaced and a service several years ago, which cost me £465; one like mine sold at auction in London a couple of years ago, for £3800, there’s one for sale on a French site, (it’s a French company), for €6800, roughly £5800.
Rolex values are artificially inflated, mine is increasing in value because it’s a quality timepiece, and not very common, and that makes it appealing. I love it still, and wear it regularly, and it keeps very good time, gains roughly a minute or so a week.
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If you watch the Wristwatch Revival channel (you should, it’s great) then you’ll realise that Rolex is nowhere near the high end of the watch market that the wealthy seem to think it is.
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I dont use a watch or a phone to tell time. I just carry my sextant around my neck and a global table of sun angles and rising times for various stars and the moon in my back pocket. I can tell you the exact time if you give me a few hours.
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Admittedly, I stopped wearing a watch about the same time I got a PDA; it had a clock built into it, and there was a belt holster for it (nerd cred, ya know…) and it kept time… well enough.
I started wearing an apple watch about four months ago, mainly as a fitness tool. the added features are a split between ‘nice to have’ and ‘annoying as fuck’, because it whines at me about stuff as the most inopportune moments…
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Back in the 90s, some friends noticed that I couldn’t answer a direct question without glancing at my watch first. It took a lot to get over that habit.
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My dad once owned a Rolex watch that he bought in the '50s. When it broke, he took it to a jeweler to and then never bothered to pick it up. He said that it never kept good time, and was happier leaving it at the jeweler’s. He was happier with his $25 Casio, which (he said) always kept good time and never needed winding or repair.
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Without considering the big three, A Lange & Sohne and FP Journe make some exquisite pieces, for sure. But even a new Seamaster with the 8800 is much more watch for the money than a Sub.
It’s all too rich for my blood anyway. I’ll stick to ETA movements that can be serviced anywhere for a few hundred bucks.
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OFFS, send a kid to college and wear a Timex instead.
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They come with paperwork and matching serial numbers. Often people will buy a real Rolex and sell a fake one with the real box and paperwork.
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0.01% problems.
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This is kind of a similar thing to the current Hot Wheels marketplace. And you could really make any comparison to anything that has scarcity and demand. Even if it’s a false scarcity, like digital commodities, or diamonds (really, how many millions of diamonds are there out there?!)
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