On value vs. cost in luxury watches: what brand is most aligned?

This is nothing more than a silly mental exercise, but on a long drive the other day my mind turned to watches (as it sometimes does), and I got to wondering about how much value I personally place on brand/prestige as a factor when deciding whether I believe a watch is worth its asking price. Only thinking about pricier luxury watches here (not Casios), and not necessarily about watches I’d actually want or be able to buy.

I’m wondering what other people think, too. I know this is a waste of time and brain-cells. But this is a watch forum, so…

The basic premise is that, say, a stainless steel Seamaster diver that costs $5,900 USD retail is---in terms of material and labor costs---probably “worth” a few hundred bucks. You can object and say we need to consider research, design & development, and marketing costs, etc, but even so, when you’re producing at the scale Omega/SWATCH is, I can’t imagine those costs amount to much for any individual item.

And yet I’d argue that the 300M diver is a reasonable value when you consider various other factors, and that’s the part that got me into the rabbit-hole. A thing is “worth” only what people are willing to pay for it, and I’d have no problem justifying $5,900 for that watch. Because…

-An in-house movement that has a long and storied evolutionary history. Co-axial escapement would be a part of this.
-A cultural history (for the watch itself), including connections to events and fictional characters.
-Its status relative to its Rolex counterpart, in that it’s less hyped but no less robust or attractive---obviously this is highly subjective---and it doesn’t generate the kind of judgment or resentment the other does.
-The allure of the Omega brand itself: this is the reputation/prestige bit.

If I’m being honest with myself, then, I’d probably value the-thing-in-itself at about $500. Which means the rather silly/emotional things I just enumerated make up more than 90% of its value to me.

Why would I possibly care so much about an in-house movement?: to my non-technical mind, a modified ETA would be just as beautiful and mystifying. And all the other stuff is based in marketing and social reasoning rather than anything inherent.

I guess some would call this a definition of “luxury.”

But what it got me wondering is: what luxury watch brand do you think sets retail prices that are fairly close (or at least closer than Omega’s) to actual intrinsic value? I’m guessing the answers may be watches at the extremes: more entry-level stainless watches (from, say, Tag?) or complicated precious metal watches that are slow sellers and can sometimes be obtained at less than retail price.

...Or are these just the ravings of a lunatic mind?

I consider Rolex the best deal at retail price. The fact that most of their watches market price is above retail supports my opinion.

With particular regard to precious metal options, I think Rolex has the most fairly priced gold in the game because at the end of the day, market pricing on gold is market pricing. And since this is the high-end forum, with regard to watchmaking chops, any Chopard LUC under 10k I'd consider to be a pretty good value.

I personally think the Longines watches, particularly the Spirit and Master Collection lines are really high value for the price.

I have a hard time loving the modern Omegas (outside of Speedmaster Moonwatch), for some reason the coax movement seems to have made all the watches giants.

Utter bollocks! When you buy a Rolex you pay for hype and bullshit, much as you do for most other brands, but you pay more for it…. Mind you, you do get much more hype and bullshit, so if that’s what you want, I s’pose you get your moneys worth

Stumbled upon an example today of some of the absurdity I implied in my OP.

A very reputable and well-respected dealer of preowned luxury watches (whom I won't name or link, as I'm not attacking them at all---they're just responding to market forces, exactly as they should) recently added several watches to their inventory, including:

1) A Patek Aquanaut 5064A quartz: this is a 34mm steel Aquanaut with a (to my eyes) rather dated and unattractive dial with yellowing numerals and the date window that looks like a total afterthought. (The latter is still sorta true of the current models. If they lost the date, it wouldn't be a bad-looking watch.) On these older versions, the rubber strap was not designed to look integrated with the case. And--again--quartz: no superbly-finished automatic PP movement to view through an open caseback.

2) A 2-year-old, like-new Lange 1815 Up & Down in rose gold: this is a 39mm precious-metal, modestly complicated (small seconds and power reserve) dress watch with the exquisitely-finished visible German silver manual-wind movement one expects from Lange.

The Patek is priced $1,400 higher than the Lange, and I don't doubt for a second that it'll sell, probably faster. But how nuts is that? Someone will pay over 25 grand USD to get an old, small, quartz steel-on-rubber Patek, but less than that for an example of real haute watchmaking in gold from a brand that produces less than a tenth of the number of watches Patek does.

And the real coup de grace, if you want to compare steel with steel:

3) An essentially brand new JLC Master 8 Days Perpetual Calendar in steel, 40mm: this is pretty much the ultimate in terms of a complicated dress watch from an unassailable brand---the full calendar including a 4-digit analog year display, moon-phase, night-day indicator, and, yes, a full 192 hours of power reserve out of the nicely-finished (if not Lange-level) visible movement...

For half the price of either the Patek or the Lange.

There's some apples-and-oranges here, I know.

Anyway, rambling. And who cares. But it made me laugh for a sec.