SUPERLATIVE CHRONOMETERS: WHAT MAKES LUXURY WATCHES SO VALUABLE

Lovers and collectors of mechanical luxury watches often pay incredible sums to get their favorite pieces. The most expensive watch in the world, the Hallucination, has a price tag of a whopping 55 million dollars. But also cheaper models from well-known brands are often in the 5 - 6-digit range. But how can such astronomical prices be explained? Here are the 5 most important reasons from us.

1. Mechanical luxury watches are unique pieces

Luxury mechanical watches are not mass-produced on an assembly line. They are often unique pieces, the movements of which are put together by the brand manufacturers, cog for cog, painstakingly by hand and with great attention to detail. Depending on the model and the complexity of the movement, the production of a single piece can take several years. Since this is done on their own by individual watchmakers, a very high level of specialist knowledge combined with a lot of experience and craftsmanship is required.

2. The built-in complications

While the high price of jewelry watches can easily be explained by the materials used such as platinum, gold, diamonds and other precious stones, the focus of mechanical luxury watches is on the art of watchmaking. The complications are of crucial importance here. These are the additional functions of the watches that are integrated into the chronometer by the watchmaker in a purely mechanical way. After the invention of quartz watches suddenly made it easy to digitally incorporate additional functions such as the alarm clock, stopwatch or moon phase display, this is a highly complicated matter in a mechanical way, which turns mechanical watches with several complications into valuable luxury accessories.

3. The price of the brand

Of course, the name of the brand plays a decisive role in the price of luxury watches. But the high brand value of luxury watches is justified by the fact that this specialist knowledge and tradition of craftsmanship is only available in very few watch manufacturers worldwide and that large watch brands have made a name for themselves over decades with their particularly outstanding quality.

4. The rarity of each model

The big brands also produce model series with several thousand units. But even those are often found in the five to six-digit range. If these are still special models, these are accordingly rare, which makes them even more valuable.

5. The materials used

Especially with the special models, particularly valuable materials such as gold, platinum and diamonds with many small but loving details are used. If that is the case, there are no longer any upper limits on the price.

No matter whether as a glamorous style statement for your outfit or as a declaration of love for detailed chronometers with elaborate complications: With us you can also enjoy wonderful masterpieces of watchmaking, such as the Flying Regulator in its various editions by Chronoswiss.

Written by Dirk Auberlen