Otherwise, I’d like to announce my zombie-powered watch which will be available soon. It’s the first time ever that undead technology has been leveraged in the field of horology. Watch for our 8-bit animated preview trailer!

He was a quiet gentleman, with a sadness about him – he knew that the great days of watchmaking were gone, and that the only real scope for his profession was in rich boy’s toys.

But there was also a quiet joy, a sparkle in his eyes, as he told me of his trade, how he’d got into it as a child, half a century earlier, the amazing engineering feats he and his colleagues performed daily, making their masterpieces just for the joy of the achievement.

Kind of like programming, really. Nobody but our colleagues will ever appreciate the quality of our code; so with a watchmaker, their work will only ever really be appreciated by their peers.

But I categorically deny being chained to any palaces or gates, and I’ve never been to Melbourne.

Jewelery is expensive, precision engineered jewelry even more so.  Sure, I’d never buy one, and I might question the sanity of someone who did, but to me it’s no different to buying a diamond ring, bit of antique furniture or a painting for your wall.  Some people just like shiny things, and they’re lucky enough to be able to afford them.

With regards to the watch… I love it.  I’d buy one of those over a huge diamond ring any day.  Looks fantastic.

I’ll have to wait for the cheap knockoff which turns green after 2 weeks, though.

A $10 Casio may well last that long, but the only reason it will never be repaired is because a new one will be bought when it fails, you wouldn’t even bother with a new strap when a new watch is cheaper. When the watch does fail, as it will, it is essentially irreparable. 

On the other hand, many of even the cheapest watches of 100 years yore are running fine, with replacement parts available, and still completely fixable if they break down. These watches have the crappiest of mechanical movements, they have lots of friction and wear internally, yet they still run (with no maintenance). They don’t even make mechanical watches that shitty today. Clocks from the 1700′s, and even earlier, are still running today.

I agree that quartz watches are capable of being very durable, and very practical, but your idea that mechanical watches are less durable is something of a fantasy. In modern mechanical watches the internal stresses are extremely low, there is very little friction, there isn’t really anything to disturb the components short of a hammer. The same applies with a quartz watch of reasonable caliber, but the mechanical watch stands a fighting chance of seeing the year 2400.

Your technology point is entirely semantic. Not all technology is electronic, and in not all cases is electronic technology better for a given purpose. Horses for courses.

I will gladly concede that most quartz watches are more accurate than mechanical counterparts, but really, mechanical watches to me are a thing of beauty. To you they need to tell the time exactly forever. For my purpose, mechanical watches are far from obsolete.

But really, this misses the point. Mechanical watch design these days is a labour of love, in fact, these kinds of things represent the pinnacle of non electric manufacturing. Does this make it worth a $45,000 price tag? Not it does not.

It is worth remembering that this watch was probably not made with the aim of selling it to rich folk, or even selling it at all. The designer(s) being horologists, most likely merely wanted to do something innovative and (mechanically) beautiful in a field that has proven so hard to innovate in – the watch you see now being sold is more of an after the fact justification than anything else. If it wasn’t it would simply be a quartz watch. Why bother with all that work for a product that won’t sell well, and costs more to produce – unless you are truly passionate about it?

 I, for one, fully support artisans/artists working to achieve their own idea of beauty.

(You would be surprised how much mechanical watch technology has come since 1891, or even since 1970 – a lack of technology this watch certainly is not)

Additionally, inventiveness, creativity and intricacy are (according to me) synonyms for beauty. Beauty, as we all know, is its own reward.

I have to call you out on the fixibility point too – modern watch repairers are trained to work on virtually any watch (as there are a lot of odd vintage watches/clocks out there). This includes parts fabrication. It probably also uses a fairly standard escapement.

The watch employs some highly specialized mechanisms with no benefits to that complexity. That kind of flim-flam only serves to explain away the crazy price tag – might as well say made with fairy juice. And it’s going to be unfixable by anyone other than the original manufacturer. 

It’s not the price that made the Vertu dumb it was the lack of technology. Sure, this watch is stupidly overpriced and beyond extravagant, but atleast you actually get what you pay for; it is not a 20 dollar Casio with some gold on it, it’s techhnological art.

I am agog.

Or possibly amagog.