I was intrigued by the price difference between a simple manual wind pocket watch and a super-complication with minute repeater, perpetual calendar, and chronograph. The super-complication is less than twice as expensive!!!

The only objective difference otherwise, to be fair, is that the perpetual has a gold case while the simple manual wind is made in platinum.

But it still seems ridiculous. If sold new today, they would be orders of magnitude different in terms of pricing.

What gives? Does anybody else have striking examples of this?

 

Nerds love gadgets. Complications are gadgets. Nerds have money. Do the math.

 

What were the prices of those metals at that time? They are both commodities and prices have fluctuated wildly over the years (and not necessarily in sync).

 

When is that ad from? Seems exorbitant for watch pricing at the time, no?

 

I reckon the helium valve as about 500-1000 USD. But, oh, so useful. Any watch filled with helium must be more worth than one without.

 

Sorry to step on your post ^^^ @styggpyggeno1 , but the nerd in me requires that I do this:

Using the stainless Ref.4062 as a baseline for the least-complicated, here are the price multipliers for the other References (in stainless steel):

Ref. 4768: Cost Multiplier = 1.43 Looks like a tradeoff (cost-wise) between Calendar, and Antimagnetic for Ref. 4313
Ref. 4313: Cost Multiplier = 1.45 See comment above.
Ref. 5036: Cost Multiplier = 1.55 Probably an additional premium for Oyster (waterproof), compared to Ref: 4768

 

The ad looks like it is from the 40's or early 50's, so that may have something to do with it as the price of platinum soared to 300% of the price of gold in the late 40's (they were comparable pre-1946). But more so than that, it shows how much value used to be put on "finely made" time only watches. 2300 USD (approx 23k after inflation) would have been roughly a tenth of the cost of a nice Manhattan apartment back then, so the pricing of the Grand Complication watch appears to be more justifiable in comparison to the time only one with our modern sensibilities. Here's another striking example: In the 50's Patek Philippe charged 2000 CHF for the time only ref. 2526 in yellow gold while they charged 3800 CHF for their perpetual calendar chronograph ref 2499.

(Photos courtesy of Hodinkee, Matthew Bain, and John Goldberger)


With the rise in popularity of tool watches and the Quartz crisis dress watches were significantly devalued, but more recently, time only watches have come back in a hard way with watchmakers like Philippe Dufour, Roger Smith, and Greubel Forsey charging 100k usd+ for their time only watches.