Sorry Tudor, It’s Not You, It’s Me… But I’m Selling My Black Bay Fifty-Eight

Owner of a SLA033 here. All I can tell you is that it’s a great watch. I have also owned a Tudor BB blue and a Doxa Sub in the past. The SLA033 just works for me like the others didn’t.

A good read. My two cents: keep the BB58, and buy something else. If you sell it, you’ll likely miss it more than you think.

Unfortunately I don’t think Tudor will ever be able to escape unfair comparisons to Rolex, like yours in the article.

Tudor manages to produce excellent watches with arguably much better value compared to Rolex. Obviously some designs do nothing for me and others do but why argue about taste?

Personally I prefer Rolex but own examples of both and obiously they each have advantages and disadvantages. Luckily I’ve never fallen out of love with a watch because I suddenly realized that it’s using its bigger brother’s success to be cool !?!#

Hi, go for a Omega Seamaster Professional Diver 300m

You can sell if to fund new watch experiences. BB58 shouldn’t be too hard to get back into if you change your mind. Otherwise, just put in the box for a while and come back to it later. Your feelings might change a month, a year, or five years from now.

I have a few watches I have had for over five years now. There were periods where I fell out of love with them, but it comes back later on. I have also bought and sold a couple of the same models a few times… Always seems to cost a lot of money to buy and sell.

Popular consensus about watches change. Brand image and direction can change.

There’s always the detail or emotion, popular consensus, etc. Some influence for why I love a watch, or decide I can live without it. You end up with the watchbox you end up with, and when you rotate what you wear, the best watch is the one currently on your wrist.

Hey Daan, sorry to hear that you are flipping this watch, which you have praised in prior articles. I think the way Rolex and Tudor are doing their product development and marketing is quite clear: Rolex does the more contemporary pieces (beefed-up cases, cerachrome etc), Tudor is doing the more vintage-style stuff, with sleeker cases, aluminum bezels etc. By doing so, Rolex is playing it safe. The BB58, with blue face and snowflake hands, sufficiently distinguishes itself from a Submariner, while it follows in the footsteps of its historic (e.g. French marine) ancestors. Since Tudor is a subsidiary of Rolex group, Tudor watches can per definition not be considered as Rolex knock-offs, just as the Speedmaster Trilogy is not a 2915-knock-off, the Moonswatch is not a Moonwatch knock-off etc. Also, the poor-man’s watch thing nowadays does not sit right with a watch that costs 4k (and I recall times when an Omega was believed to be a poor man’s Rolex). While I find Lex’s article a little harsh and do not agree with its conclusions, I have a lot of respect for his clear position. I cannot say the same about your article though. You exit your watch – that you actually liked until yesterday – after the brand has released another watch. It seems your decision is based on an alleged damage to brand image, in the sense that Tudor as a brand is no longer suitable for a sophisticated watch nut, or for someone who wants to boast his watch, or whatever. The fact that even educated people are basing their decisions a little too much on mere brand image is probably one of the core problems of the watch industry and the watch herd. Would I sell my Speedmaster(s), because when thinking of Omega, occasionally the cheesy 1980’s Omega advertising comes to mind? I would not. My feeling is that not you yourself, but some of your Fratelli fellows talked you out of this watch. Stand your ground, man!

Tudor was always (from inception) intended be a more affordable Rolex. The only one I own is an old Tudor Prince Oysterdate chronograph (er, Automatic Chrono-Time). Honestly, I was tempted by the fact that it had its original box which humbly looks like an old Parker pen case, what fun and a throwback to simpler times when watch boxes were not so elaborate, seemed like a good investment given the marketing money now behind the brand, and that it was different enough from my Daytona that I might wear it from time to time both for having a date at 3 and panda registers at 12-6-9, but more important had a black face and bezel and my Daytona is white with steel. It actually is engraved “Original Oyster Case by Rolex Geneva” with the Rolex crown (!) on the back to avoid all doubt.

Yes, snobs would always avoid if not deride Tudor as the “poor man’s Rolex” but it was Wilsdorff’s marketing genius to expand Rolex’s market beyond those who could afford or were willing to pay for the flagship models. The modern genius of Rolex is that it recognised in Tudor a ready made solution (if one that would take some selling) to the sports watch demand faced by Rolex. Back when watches were a functional accessory, and men typically owned only one, you would have to think pretty long and hard about about buying an expensive sports model rather than the dress watch most men were expected to wear (which explains in part the initial poor sales of the Daytona). Now when so many men wanting play watches as well as dress, Rolex would have to re-engineer the whole firm to both meet that demand at Rolex parameters and not abandon its other still thriving dressier lines. Rolex is conservative, and simply gearing up everything could both be financially risky and threaten the quality image.

It took a lot of investment in marketing, but Tudor could start from third party movements for which Rolex proper would have been excoriated as a regressive step, and they could introduce small design tweaks to further broaden the customer base, like fun colours, cloth straps, and retro features like guardless crowns and riveted bracelets which in Rolex itself have all been superseded as part of the apparent company philosophy of small incremental progress. More importantly, Tudor could unlike Rolex skew its product offering towards sports watches with the dressier ones an afterthought. In that sense, it seems clear that Tudor was given a massive injection of resources to satisfy the demands for submariners, Daytonas, GMTs, Explorers etc. that Rolex could not (at least in their own judgement) prudently meet.

Tudor is still a premium watch, Tudor’s niche is to be cheaper than a Rolex, not inexpensive. To be a reasonable substitute for a Rolex when price is an issue, not something else, and in this current epoch, to be widely available when all Rolex production is quickly taken off the retail market by collectors and investors. Rolex is now even narrowing the gap in quality with new in-house movements for Tudor. Tudor is filling the mission of making up for Rolex sports watch availability admirably, why would Rolex stray into Tudor own designs and jeopardise that?

As for me, I have been collecting watches for a very long time and have plenty of Rolexes among others I would tend to wear instead on most occasions, but even I am tempted by the Back-Bay bronze which is just on the right side of that is not a Rolex for me!