Let Me Revisit That: Why Budget Mechanical Watches Don’t Make Sense

I was one of the responders who didn’t take your post too seriously and always felt it was designed to attract comments (which it did!)
The most interesting thing for me to emerge from the discussion was that even high end brands will simply switch movement if you send your watch to their service department. For valuable movements, what you get back is a factory reconditioned movement which came out of a prior customers watch, and yours will go into a future customers watch.
This has probably already happened to many readers watches on the forum without them being aware of it.
You could call this a giant Ponzi scheme, but it is a rational response to managing the sale of millions of mechanical watches which are nowadays an anachronism and for which there are not a corresponding increase in watchmakers to fix them (outside the original manufacturers factory). We have an analogous situation here in the UK where millions of electric cars have now been sold, but the charging infrastructure has not kept pace.
The bottom line is that if you really want to keep your specific movement which came with the watch, you probably need to use an independent service expert, and if you use the manufacturer, ask some very searching questions.
Having said that, the major volume brands (Rolex, Omega etc) have deliberately engineered their newer movements with wearing parts not made available to independents, so you end up stuck with manufacturers servicing whether you want it or not. You get trapped in other words.
All good reasons for sticking with vintage, lower end mechanical or quartz, unless you want to spend mega bucks on one of the real prestige, low volume brands

The wrongest of all facts, unfortunately vastly supported by marketing teams is “if the service cost more than the item, the item is worthless and servicing it is a loss”. We hear that about cars, we hear that about clothes, about everything in fact. But is that really so? The real question is “with this amount of money, what is the solution that gets me satisfied in the end?”

I see nothing wrong in spending more servicing a watch than it’s retail price. I own of few low-budget pieces, but I’ve grown attached to them, mainly because of the memories attached to it. In addition to that it’s better for the planet to repair instead of replace.

Same goes with cars : I had a few thousand euros bill for a fix on my 10 years old car. The mechanics told me “it’s more than the value of the car, don’t do it”. My answer “Can I buy a working car with the same level of performance and comfort with this money?”. “of course not, you’ll have to pay a little extra, but you’ll have a new car!”

tldr : just repair your damn stuff, all of it, whatever the retail price. It’s always worth it.

Typical out of touch Frattello.

You guys are snobs.

I say to each his own.

$1,000 is still a lot of money to spend. And you can still get great value in vintage and pre-owned mechanical watches. I don’t care about accuracy as much as I do about quality, design, history, and what’s inside. Batteries do not do it for me.

For context, I’m 65 now, and never bought a Swatch. I’ve owned three quartz watches. I still have them. One was a ’82 Seiko Sports 100 diver. I had the battery changed and pressure tested. Water got in and even though I got it back to the shop in less than 24 hours, it was pronounced dead on arrival. The other two are tucked away with dead batteries. One is a G Shock NASA that I wore maybe three times. I have over 100 mechanical watches, many of which I’ve never had serviced and they still work. I’ve owned most since the 90’s, and they might be 30 seconds +/- a day, but they are also over 50 years old and loads of charm when I wind them and listen to the movement.

You weren’t totally wrong. I bought a Christopher Ward (mechanical) dive watch many years ago for about $400 US. The winding gear stripped and I couldn’t wind it. I shipped it back to CW in England where they “fixed” it. A year later it stripped again and can’t be wound. Watch repair shops in California won’t repair it, or would charge more than the watch cost. I had hoped to pass this watch to my son (or daughter) when I pass, but you were right, it’s not “heirloom” quality. I don’t wear the watch anymore, and hope someday to own a higher quality timepiece that will last generations. YOU WEREN’T wrong sir!

I wear watches because they tell storys and remind me where I have been , my first watch I bought 24 years ago a seiko kenetic I still wear I was 19 and had just began working as an emt . My next watch was bought and given to me as a gift by my then girlfriend when we were broke kids its a green faced seiko 5 that years later when she became my wife I happend to be wearing when our daughter was born. We both went to school and became nurses a period where she bought me a watch every year for christmas and as we grew up and became more succesfull my watches every year got more and more expesive .Rigjt now im in a $30 casio my mom bought for me before she died
I couldnt care less how much your watch is worth , tell me where its been tell me its story and lets have a drink .

I think the original article was spot on. Just like inexpensive wine, a tiny minority of the cost is in the contents, with the majority spent on packaging, marketing and shipping. Doesn’t mean that there aren’t good examples out there but for a little more the results are considerably better. Occasionally though, a £5 bottle of Montepulciano hits the spot!