Since then, you've been able to get a cheap, reliable watch for next to nothing. Quartz movement, combined with mechanization of production, ensured that. The whole industry had to adapt to making watches themselves sort of an aesthetic statement, not a practical tool to keep you from being late.

At this point, any watch costing more than $25 is itself an aesthetic piece. Part of that aesthetic is where and how it's made. There's probably a market for watches made in Antarctica because of whatever sense of taste that "story" appeals to.

That’s not true at all. There have always been a lot of reasons to wear a watch that have nothing to do with getting the time. Cheap movements expanded the market to the low-end, but didn’t really change the reasons that people buy watches.

Fundamentally, watches are jewelry. That’s been true forever, but it also isn’t something that can be reduced to “aesthetics” alone (for example, people pay handsome premiums for better mechanical movements, even though it has no impact on the look of a watch. The idea of wearing a well-crafted, tiny mechanical device is itself an attractive prospect.)

It’s the equivalent of people who talk about Windows machines being “better deals” than Apple machines. After all, they both flip bits, right? If all you do is fixate on the function, everything becomes a commodity.

Maybe watches have always been somewhat aesthetic, and while they were made to be pretty in the 1920s, they really did exist as timepieces first and foremost. Now a mechanical watch's main function is the way it makes you feel.

As adornments go, I also think that handing over $500 to a local jewelry artist would get you a better bracelet.

The mechanical-movement wristwatch is obsolete. Bring on the Pip-Boy.

Wristwatches do tell the time, and a decent mechanical one will do so far far longer than any electronics device, even high end quartz wristwatches.

Not having any moving parts would generally mean a quartz movement will be more durable.

Barely, and replacement parts (and sometimes even appropriate batteries) can be extremely hard to source.

> Not having any moving parts

Electronics are brittle and do degrade over time. As I observe them, they last about 20 to 30 years realistically. Early mass produced commercial quartz watches are prized collector items, whereas mechanical watches from before the quartz revolution are easy to find in perfect working condition.

Equally technically, non-functional mechanical-movement watches from before piezoelectric-movement are also easy to find in garbage heaps and bankrupted watch-repair shops, and the "perfect working condition" of the functional ones are possibly a result of Ship-of-Theseus-style maintenance. Note that mechanical timepiece repair is a somewhat less viable business than it once was, and able to support only a tiny fraction of workers as it once did.

Quartz watches have fewer individual repair parts available, because the typical repairs are to replace the battery and to replace the entire movement. Now, it is reasonable to consider the repair part for a broken quartz watch to be a newly-manufactured watch, and the repair procedure is to remove the broken watch from your wrist and replace it with the working new one.

Mechanical watches are certainly useless when removed from Earth, whereas electronic timepieces may be reprogrammed to display the numbers of a different timekeeping convention.

More realistic: fleece suckers who think “Made in America” make it worth spending $500 for a $50 watch.

>More realistic: fleece suckers who think “Made in America” make it worth spending $500 for a $50 watch.

Most $500 watches are worth way less, even $50, so nothing special about this (regardless of where they are made).

Besides, getting domestic jobs for people is still worth something. Those laid off factory workers of old aren't gonna "reinvent" themselves anytime soon and get into Silicon Valley, but if they could get a new factory job that's something - and beats homelessness or low-end shitty gigs like Uber.

Why not make everything you can make? Would there be a problem is the US manufactured CPUs and phones as opposed to sending them to be made in China/Korea/Taiwan/etc?

To outsource externalities (e.g. environmental costs)? Or to stifle any labor demands (by moving your production to wherever you like any time they are raised somewhere)?

Why doesn’t everyone buy Toyotas?

It’s not being a sucker, unless we broaden the term where most all of us are suckers.

Because nobody can afford 'em?

Ok - I'm speaking mainly of their pickups, which are (overall) great vehicles (disregarding the earlier frame-rot issue they had in the early 2000s).

But they're so great, that even used ones sell for absurd amounts...

I entirely agree with the FTC, their claims were dishonest. As a point of comparison, Switzerland regulates what percentage of the watch must be Swiss before it can be claimed to be "Swiss," but it's not an easy question. For example, with completely made up numbers, low wage Chinese manufacturer sells mostly finished movement for $20 that required 4 hours to make. High wage Swiss assembler puts in another hour, at a cost of $40. Total time is 5 hours, 80/20 Chinese/Swiss and total cost is 60, 33/67 Chinese/Swiss. From time perspective, it's a Chinese watch, but from cost perspective it's Swiss.

[1] - https://www.truthinadvertising.org/revisiting-shinolas-made-...

Most watches are like that. In the high end, it's $1000 product being sold for $30000.

>Further, it completely misses the point of what made Timex famous to begin with; excellent quality at a low price.

They already do well in that market. It's not enough for them, they want a market with better margins.

It's not like they're the only: Casio G-shocks are now having a "high end" brand, selling $100-$200 worth of watches for 1 to several K dollars. There's a basic square (the classic 6510 and co mechanism that sells for 30-50$) that goes for $800 just because it's now in stainless steel.

With the Tissot you're just getting a pretentious overpriced crap (whether it has this or that custom movement, the margins are still stacked way against the buyer).

Brands change, particularly fashion brands. Many high-end brands become debased and low end brands slowly scale up in quality to become high-end a decade later. Timex doesn't need to make a lot of 500 dollar watches because they wont sell a lot of 500 dollar watches.

It might however move the perceived value of the brand outside of the discount bin, and earn some cheap goodwill advertising while it does so.

My wife and I have noticed this kind of trend with fast food. At one time, certain fast-food brands were considered "higher-tier" than other fast-food brands, but over time, they have swapped places (in some cases more than once).

The only ones which seem to "stay where they are" have been McDonalds (not for trying, though) and Taco Bell (they know their spot and market - smart choice, I'd say).

The others seem to migrate around, depending on the market, etc.

Beyond that, Timex is a brand name relegated to disposable $20 watches. Trying to fluff up their mind share with a poorly made and laughably priced product is not going to work out for them.

It's from Ronda and it's a good movement.

I used to have a fun 24 hour analog quartz watch that I stopped wearing after I got a ~$150 Garmin fitness watch. This thing always tells perfect time because it syncs off my phone (including time changes from traveling or DST), has a GPS tracker for runs and bike rides, can measure heart rate, and pairs via Bluetooth and reads me incoming text messages.

It's crazy how, at much cheaper price, you get so much more functionality with a smart watch. And it's even better at being a watch! It just doesn't look as nice.

This is just based on watching both pricing and availability at watch retailers. So when earlier this year I saw an attractive new Timex design listed at a bit of a stretch price considering it's a Timex, I decided to buy it. I own other reliable and discontinued Timex watches that never reappeared on the market. Nothing _really_ high end though--and for that reason I think they noticed the room for additional profit.

It's getting a bit worn unfortunately, as a word, but IMO good "design" still moves customers and this moves products.

I'm glad I bought my new Timex (nothing super high-end, just around to $100 but not a design I had seen before) and I bought it from a watch retailer who up until recently refused to carry them. Something's changing.

Looking at the $500 price, a lot of watch collectors look for that thing that the other guy doesn't have, which also gives them brand nostalgia, etc. They know that when it's gone, it's usually gone. And $500 is nothing to a lot of these guys. They will spend $500 on a pocket knife that stays in their pocket all day.

Because they saw Shinola doing the same thing, which proved that 'Made in the USA' on a watch is all it takes for suckers to pay premium for a mediocre product.

I'm guessing their strategy of engaging non-watch companies to supply parts (and it shows) has something to do with the price and likely low production volumes it will receive.

But I agree–the hands look terrible even for a $50 watch, and those movements are certainly costing Timex less than $10 each. The only value here is the story, and nice (if underfinished) brass caseback insert. The rest of it is positively terrible at that retail price.

I don't doubt there are plenty of really cool watches out there that are "worth" $500.... but generally they seem to be fashion products where even the price seems pretty disconnected with the actual product / utility.

Plus, nobody is buying a $50,000 Patek because it solves the problem of showing what time it is. It's about appreciation of artistry and craftsmanship and letting other people know that you are the kind of person to wear a Patek.

Complaining that the watch isn't "worth" something when it comes to fashion... not sure that jives exactly.

A Kia works exactly the same at driving, so therefore with your logic, it's worth exactly the same.

High-end watches are extraordinarily complex machines, and yes, generally have a "luxury" look which may be un-necessary in your eyes. Though, the market for "incognito" luxury movements within cheap watches is way too small to be sustainable.

What do you mean by that? In what way are they better at measuring time?

That isn't generally true.

Here's an analog quartz chronograph that has 1/10 second dial: https://youtu.be/mPP3EeWdJsA?t=97

If you are talking about a sweep second hand, there are plenty of quartz movements that do that.

If you go for digital quartz, you can get 1/100 second accuracy in a $10 watch.

The longer you time something, the worse the mechanical watch is going to be. Most of them gain or lose several seconds every day.

Zenith is the only manufacturer that I know does significantly better than this, but that particular movement is pretty rare and extraordinarily expensive.