Originally Posted by
Mitch
I much prefer my current watches to be quartz.
With vintage watches bought for the history it is different.
I have quite a number of mechanical watches, that I got many years ago. They sit there unused and unworn in the main. Why? They don't keep very good time by today's best standards, they need constant adjustment, they are relatively fragile and if I wear them they will need very expensive servicing down the line, often putting me at the mercy of some mercenary watch company.
Quartz contain much more of man's skills and ingenuity than a clockwork watch. If I was to transport a watchmaker from the 19th century to today he would understand and could work on the mechanical watch. However, a solar, atomic watch would be indistinguishable from magic to him.
However, probably the main reason I don't buy Swiss mechanicals any more, is that I don't like to feel like a mug.
Quartz when first produced were far more expensive than mechanicals. However as design and production techniques improved they became vastly more cheaper to produce.
Actually the same thing has happened to mechanical watches though you wouldn't know it. Production techniques, design, automated machinery etc etc will have reduced the cost of production of mechanical watches by a great amount. (Nearly all mechanical watches are mass produced by machinery).
The same thing has happened across nearly all spheres, cars, TVs, white goods etc etc. These are much cheaper to buy today, relative to average incomes, for the consumer than they were in the Sixties. The quality and performance is much better as well. But with watches they have hugely increased the relative price of most Swiss watches. You are not paying a true market price, you are paying a controlled, semi cartel, price based on marketing. Why don't people hanker after old Bakelite TVs with their slow switching valves and general fragility? Nobody has marketed them as some wonderful desirable thing as against the soulless digital things we actually buy today, that's why..
Consumers in this market are seen as mugs to be squeezed for as much money as they can be, unrelated to the cost or actual performance of the product. Marketing is to convince people they are getting something special when it isn't.
Yes, people still like their, relatively slow, classic cars with their unreliable multi carbs, distributors, basic brakes and suspensions etc etc. Hell I have got a rare classic sports car myself that I have owned from new.
However, just try to manufacture a similar spec'd car today and sell it in the market, as a new product, at a huge premium over modern cars and see how far you get!
My daughter indulges herself in designer bags. She owns quite a few running up to $4000. They run well beyond this out there as well.
Why do women lust after a Chanel handbag? Do they use amazing materials not used on 'ordinary' bags? Do they perform so much better?
Or has marketing convinced them that they are buying into some luxurious and exclusive lifestyle not available to owners of pleb bags?
Must be some reason!
Just imagine if Quartz had remained as expensive as when it was first brought out. Only a very small minority of consumers could afford them.
If that was the same today. Instead of people going ooh ahh at someone posting their latest mechanical Patek or ALS, they would be doing it to someone posting their exclusive quartz watch, unobtainable except to the richest.
The jump second? Well, before quartz, this was a highly desirable very rare and very expensive complication on a mechanical watch. Now that it is ubiquitous on quartz, people apparently dislike the jump second and like the more exclusive 'stutter' second. Why? Anything to do with marketing do you think?
I am sure that there will be plenty of people on here who will declare that if quartz had remained hugely expensive and exclusive, they would think exactly the same as now.
However, believe me, by and large they wouldn't. They would be cooing over the miracle of that jump second, ultra accurate, ultra exclusive, ultra expensive, quartz watch. The majority of us having to make do with the poorly performing, more common mechanical.
Its the name of the game.
No, the main reason why I don't buy Swiss mechanicals is that I like to go through life without feeling like a mug, which I would if I spent $10,000 on a mass produced SS mechanical watch.
Mitch
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