This level of watch and their valuation always fascinates me. Not just for the incredible workmanship of the watches but because, generally, I find the individual watches to be butt ugly. But that may just mean I’m uncultured.
Why this watch costs over $450,000
No, your first instinct is correct, they’re butt-ugly. It appears to be the fashion for watches now. Butt-ugly and grotesquely large.
This is why we have variety in the world. I think that watch is a stunningly beautiful piece of craftsmanship. It makes me think of Leonardo DaVinci. The idea of the perpetual calendar, that moves correctly for leap years and automatically moves to the next month in a mechanical watch is fascinating.
Of course, as a computer scientist, I am also fascinated with the complexity inherent in the Apple S4 SoC that allows us to write a program that pings a network time server so that the date and time are constantly updated. The same type of logical thought process that is needed to be a good software developer is also needed to solve these problems in a mechanical way in this watch.
My question is is this watch even repairable when it eventually breaks?
Its odd that the ugliest things are often the cheapest and the most expensive.
And the voiceover makes no sense- the watch is $450,000 “because of the craftsmanship”, yet the platinum one costs $1,000,000?
Sure there are materials, labor, and expertise costs to consider, but what they’ll never admit is that on top of all that they’re adding a nice fat markup of 1,000% to 3,000% (or more!).
It’s $500,000 not $1,000,000 and that’s because platinum is more expensive than gold.
What are you judging as the cost to make this watch that you have determined the markup? The number of people with the ability to make a watch of this intricacy level is diminishing. That makes their time more valuable. I would venture to guess that you have no idea how much it costs in parts and labor to build one of these.