Buying a mechanical wristwatch can be an enriching experience. It can also be an expensive one, if you’re looking for something over and beyond that intriguing little tick emanating from it.
For many years now, the ‘in’ thing to do when first achieving success is to purchase a Rolex. A Mercedes, Porsche or Ferrari comes second and a house comes a lowly third. It’s not just a watch first, it’s a Rolex. And why a Rolex before a car or a house? Well, it’s quite simple. That watch will be on your wrist 24 hours a day for everyone to see, and that includes your own admiring glances, to appreciate and illustrate that yes, you’ve arrived, you’ve made it, you’re one of the elite. But why this lust for a Rolex? Well, it’s difficult to be sure; nevertheless, in my not so humble opinion it comes from the fact that Rolex was one of the first brands to really market itself way back when and make watches capable of standing up to extreme conditions. There’s also another not-so-insignificant factor that they look good, not to mention the fact that the name Rolex rolls off the tongue as smoothly as water off one of their water resistant Submariners.
The question most often asked is, “Why do mechanical watches cost so much? Surely if we can purchase a Swatch in plastic for around $50 and one in metal for not too much more, why do we have to add so many zeros to purchase a Patek Philippe, Breguet or Cartier?”
Quartz Vs. Mechanical
Well, if we take away the precious metals and hyper-expensive gemstones from the bling versions, the difference is basically quartz vs. mechanical. A quartz movement simply uses a quartz crystal as its timing element that drives the watch hand and uses a battery for its power. A mechanical movement on the other hand is a miniature marvel of mechanics, a complex entity that can have as many as 300 or 400 components microscopically linked to create not only a mechanism, but one that accurately counts up to 60 seconds, 60 minutes and 24 hours, and gives the date, day of the week and the moon-phase. And if you treat it with the reverence it deserves, through sickness and in health, it will last you a lifetime … and then some.
Complications
But, just as in married life, there are all sorts of complications, except in the watch world where a complication refers to any mechanical addition to a watch above and beyond hours, minutes and seconds functions. For example, there’s the chronograph,which can be used to time anything from boiling an egg to the sprint final at the Olympic Games – worn by many a couch potato simply because they look so good. Many watches have a power reserve function – that’s the one that indicates how much time you have left before you need to rewind it or give it a good shake if it has an automatic movement – which you will find in fine timepieces by such renowned brands as Patek Philippe, IWC, Zenith, Jaeger-LeCoultre and more. Then there are the day/date and moon-phase indicators, which leading brands such as Blancpain, Cartier, Chopard, Girard-Perregaux and Omega manufacture. Other watches have alarms, minute repeaters – those are the ones that chime the time – and many more.
For those of you looking for the definitive watch – the one that’s going to impress you and your pals, takes hours to explain and yet makes your wrist look as good as its ever going to – you could do worse than buying either a tourbillon or a perpetual calendar. The tourbillon was invented by a Abraham-Louis Breguet in 1801 to compensate for the errors in timing caused by maintaining the pocket watch in an upright position for too long – something that doesn’t affect us with a wristwatch, but it’s still a virtuosic piece of mechanical watchmaking. There’s a new wristwatch tourbillon model by Breguet and other leading brands, such as Cartier, IWC, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Louis Vuitton, Zenith, Vacheron Constantin and Giraud-Perregaux, to name but a few, also offer quite spectacular models.
Although many believe the tourbillon to be the summit of watchmaking, a legitimate case can also be made for the automatic perpetual calendar which indicates not only the hours, minutes and seconds, but also the date, day of the week, month of the year, whether or not its a leap year, moon-phases and will continue to offer the correct indications for the next hundred or so years before requiring a minor date adjustment. The very best of these are manufactured by world-renowned Swiss brands such as Patek Philippe, IWC, Blancpain, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Giraud-Perregaux and others.
Creation and Production
A newly created watch from a leading manufacturer, the most simple indicating hours, minutes and seconds, can take up to two years to produce from its initial concept, design, prototype, fabrication of parts to its launch on the market. A watch with several complications can take up to five years to realize from start to finish. Why so long? Well, practically all the parts have to be produced individually and by hand for the prototype, then the machines must be calibrated and set to work to manufacture the parts. Add to this the physical assembling of a watch, which can take anywhere from 24 hours for the simplest of watches and up to a year for an expert watchmaker to assemble and regulate the most complicated watches. The creation of a mechanical watch is a time-consuming occupation, and as simple as the watch may appear,it is demanding in technology, technique and expertise, and ultra-demanding in assembly, where the slightest error can mean a major delay.
The Coup de Grace
So now you can begin to understand why watches with complications cost so much money. If you have any lingering doubts, let me give you an analogy. Supposing you use your car on a daily basis and you clock up 20,000 miles a year at an average speed of 45 miles an hour, your car’s engine will have completed a total of somewhere around 600 million revolutions over a ten-year period. Now imagine your average mechanical wristwatch working for ten years, it will have clocked up to four times as many revolutions as the engine, some 2,522 million. And if that’s not enough, your use of the car probably averages out atone or two hours a day while your watch, by comparison, performs with constant precision, without a break, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for those ten years without stopping.
So if you have a mechanical watch on your wrist, you are the proud owner of an extraordinarily complex miniature machine that contains more components than your car and gives irreproachable service without guzzling gas. Now let’s be honest, bearing in mind these comparisons, do you still question why a mechanical watch costs what it costs? Now that you know, isn’t it worth the price asked? By the way, just out of interest, I’m sure you’ve already serviced your car – or at least made an appointment to change the oil and check the tires – but when was the last time you actually thought about servicing that vastly underrated and complex machine on your wrist?
