On vacation in NYC I looked at a Longines at the boutique in WTC. I wasn’t ready to buy right then, but the saleswoman was very helpful and gave me her card in case I wanted to buy later.
I live in Atlanta so I assume I can source locally, but as mentioned, I wanted her to get the sale. Are there any pitfalls or anything I should be aware of in buying the watch remotely from the NYC location (in terms of service, warranty, etc)?
Not to my knowledge. This was an AD I presume? Out of curiosity, which model(s) are you interested in?
yes at an AD. Conquest blue dial (41 or 39mm can’t remember)
Did you try it on? Looks like some people hate the large crown guards with some saying they were uncomfortable, but it probably depends on your anatomy. I assume you are talking about the automatic, not the quartz. Can they do a better deal than full retail price? Paying too much is generally the only pitfall I can think of when buying from AD.
There are some nice watch stores in the Oculus. I’m not really sure what is going on with the NYC watch scene. The former Tourneau locations on 57th street, Madison Avenue, and 42nd street have all rebranded.
There’s signage up for a big Panerai boutique on Madison, I think where Hermes used to be.
There are few if any watches that keep anywhere close to “perfect” time, but an inexpensive quartz watch will generally be more accurate than a mechanical watch of any price. For example, a high grade of accuracy for a Swiss watch is the chronometer status granted by COSC. The mechanical accuracy requirement for that is -4/+6 seconds per day (think Rolex). The quartz accuracy requirement is +/- 0.07 seconds per day.
The main driver of the price difference is the fact that mechanical watches generally have hundreds of minuscule parts manufactured to tight tolerances and must be assembled, tuned, and tested by hand. Let’s ignore watches that cost more than supercars for a moment and look at affordable industry-standard Swiss workhorse movements. The quartz Ronda 515 is ubiquitous with (ungraded) accuracy of -10/+20 seconds per month and has a replacement cost of $8. The mechanical ETA 2428-2 has a standard (ungraded) accuracy ranging from +/- 12 to 30 seconds per day and has a replacement cost of about $250. To put that in perspective though, it’s possible to get a quality Swiss watch with a 2824-2 or equivalent for under $300 street price, so you know where most of the money is going.
Without economies of scale, the production costs increase substantially. That’s why brands with completely “in-house” movement production generally cost much more, and the limit for that is bounded only in the millions I suppose. Of course, there are precious metals and jewels which can add substantial cost as well, but that’s not generally why those watches are so pricey.
Is there even a market for high-end quartz watches, or is the concept itself considered gauche by watch aficionados?
That’s a good question. There’s certainly a market for high-end quartz, albeit a limited one, and some watch aficionados consider them to be gauche. I’m not a huge fan of quartz but mostly out of appreciation for the historical yet dying art of watchmaking, but also like what the hell are you paying for exactly?
In many cases, the answer is you’re paying for a fashion brand doing a huge upcharge on junk quality imported goods (i.e., the standard American business model), and I think that soils the perception of quartz since they spam this segment of the market with bad offerings. That said, there are plenty of fine quartz watches that are of equal quality (good craftsmanship, quality steel, sapphire crystal) to their automatic counterparts and/or priced appropriately.
There are quartz watches I’d love to own, and they tend to be digital / tool watches that do things autos can’t, or they’re just really unusual. Here are the first two I thought of:
Breitling Aerospace ($4,450)
Casio G-Shock GMW5000TCF-2 ($1,700)
True high-accuracy quartz pieces are almost always thermocompensated (basically accounting for slight changes in the vibrational frequency that track with temperature changes), they’re very niche. I am pretty sure the B posted by lawnmower man is thermocompensated. A lot of high-accuracy pieces are Japanese (both seiko and citizen make a few).
I’ve owned one piece that qualified, the Seiko SBQJ015, which is not thermocompensated and is calibrated to human body temp, so if you don’t wear it every day it will drift out of spec. It’s one of the few pieces I really regret flipping.
(not my pic)
I’m almost positive that all of the current seikos that meet the spec are in the Grand Seiko line and will retail for low four-figures, and are rated to less than 5 sec/year. Usually these have an independently settable hour hand so you don’t fuck up your sync when adjusting for DST or travel (even my cheapo SBQJ had this).
Citizen’s chronomaster is a little more affordable but isn’t cosmetically finished as nicely.
yep
a wild 8T23 appeared!
Yes, that says “manual winding quartz”
I am a level 0 watch aficionado. I was already kinda cheap, and functionally I don’t have any cares as long as the thing tells time. My personal style is very minimalist…. I think visually noisy chronometers with a million dials are super tacky. I don’t like most Breitlings, for instance, at any price.
That’s why I’m so happy I found a brand for me: MVMT. I know they’re so cheap that true watch gurus think they’re utterly without class. At their price point, they’re versatile enough for me to style with any look. And they reliably tell time, until the battery dies or the strap breaks…. Which happens to nice watches too.
On my phone but when I get home, I’ll post pictures of what I think are perfectly nice watches, that fit with my look, for under $200.
What, you don’t think something like this is the ideal of class and elegance that we should all aspire to?
I think you have some of the causation mixed up here
like, most “watch gurus” would rather wear a ~$100 Seiko SNK809 than a Jacob & Co.
The biggest problem I have with fashion watches is the markup on a made in China watch using cheap parts. If you’re fine with quartz, then you can get the real thing for not that much more:
Almost forgot about these being quartz watches I’d definitely wear / own, especially the Sparc MGS.
