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Jason
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2004
 
2015-03-09, 18:22

Interesting article written by the guy who runs Hodinkee.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/9/817...ymer-interview

Quote:
At and above $20,000, you begin to enter the absolute highest echelons of mechanical watchmaking. Here the human value of each watch can make up 50 percent of the final retail price. There are two different roads one can take in this category of uber watch — either the Mr. Dufour route where the watches are simple looking, but incredibly finely finished and beautiful from the rear (similar to these), or one can trend toward "complicated" watches. These watches can, for example, keep track of the date, including leap years, for over 200 years at a time. If a watch is complicated and incredibly finely finished, the price compounds into the six-figure range — like a Patek Philippe perpetual calendar chronograph. In this range, almost anything goes and the human value should always be significant. Further, there is really no end-point for the price someone will pay for a watch — the most valuable watches in the world are in fact from last century, produced entirely without the aid of computers. This means that all vintage watches hold even higher human value than most of the expensive complicated pieces of today. The ne plus ultra of mechanical watchmaking is the Patek Philippe Henry Graves Supercomplication, which sold this past November for $24,000,000. Why? Because it is not only incredibly complicated, with 24 distinct functions, but designed and built entirely by the human hand — something the Apple Watch will never be able to claim.
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