Sliding the trackpad down with a rhythmic, almost masochistic persistence, the man in the dimly lit kitchen watches the graph on the screen dip. It is 4:44 AM. The blue light reflects off his glasses, catching the faint glint of the brushed steel on his wrist-a reference that, according to the latest quarterly report from a major secondary market platform, has lost exactly 14 percent of its value in the last 24 weeks. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t even sigh. He just looks at the numbers as if they are a personal betrayal, a breach of a contract he signed with a YouTube influencer he has never met.

The watch was supposed to be his “exit piece.” It was supposed to be the hedge against inflation, the tangible asset that would outperform his index funds while providing the tactile satisfaction of 28,804 vibrations per hour. Instead, it has become a source of quietly compounding doubt. He closes the laptop, the screen-hinge clicking with a finality that feels like a gavel. He stands up, pours a glass of water, and decides, with a desperate sort of resolve, that he will never mention the 14 percent to his wife. To her, it is just a beautiful object. To him, it is a line item that is currently underwater.

01

The Permission Structure

It is a peculiar form of madness. We are told by every auction house press release and every Instagram “dealer” that we aren’t just buying a timepiece; we are curated investors in a portable asset class. But this narrative is not a financial strategy. It is a permission structure. It is the clever lie we tell our rational brains so we can spend $44,444 on a tiny machine that tells time less accurately than the microwave.

I felt this dissonance deeply last week when I accidentally joined a high-stakes video call with my camera on. I was sitting in my home office, wearing an old t-shirt with a coffee stain, frantically trying to find a misplaced invoice, and there I was-projected onto the screens of 14 executives in tailored suits. That moment of sudden, unwanted visibility, where my messy reality collided with a professional facade, is exactly how it feels to be a watch “investor” right now. The market has turned its camera on, and many collectors are realizing they aren’t wearing the bulletproof armor they thought they were. They are just holding a piece of jewelry in a room full of people who are suddenly very interested in the exit sign.

The Torque of Reality

Take Helen T., for example. Helen is a wind turbine technician who spends her days 304 feet in the air, tethered to a nacelle in the middle of a gusty plain. She doesn’t care about the “investment-grade” status of her gear. When she is up there, dealing with 64-pound components and the literal torque of a massive energy producer, she needs things that work. She wears a watch that has been beaten against steel beams and exposed to hydraulic fluid. To Helen, the value of the watch is its utility-its ability to survive a 14-hour shift without losing a second.

“A tool is something you use until it dies. The idea of buying a tool and putting it in a plastic coffin-a safe-deposit box-to wait for a 24 percent price jump is a form of mechanical sacrilege.”

– Helen T., Turbine Technician

She told me once, over a drink that cost $4 (though she tipped $4), that she finds the current watch market “hilarious.” She is the outlier. Most of us have been seduced by the siren song of the “speculative asset.”

02

Accountants of Pleasure

This seduction is maintained by an entire ecosystem designed to keep the permission alive. There are price guides that update every 24 days, influencers who talk about “liquidity” as if they are managing a hedge fund, and dealers who treat a scratch on a lug like a crack in a diamond. This culture has turned us into accountants of our own pleasure. We no longer look at the way the light hits a sunburst dial; we look at whether the “full set” includes the original hangtag, because that tag represents a 4 percent swing in resale value.

The cost of this mindset is not just financial. It is the erosion of the original spark. Remember the first time a mechanical watch spoke to you? It wasn’t because it was “undervalued.” It was because the sweep of the second hand felt like a pulse. It was because you realized that someone had spent 144 hours-or 1,004 hours-finishing the bridges of a movement that most people would never see. That was the magic.

But when you treat a watch as an investment, you stop being its owner and start being its guardian. You stop wearing it to the beach because the salt air might affect the bezel. You stop wearing it to the garage because you’re afraid of a “desk diving” mark on the clasp. You become a servant to the object’s future value, sacrificing your present enjoyment for a hypothetical payout in 2034.

The Anxiety of Profit

I have made this mistake myself. I once bought a vintage chronograph because the “market data” suggested it was the next big thing. I spent 34 months checking auction results more often than I checked the weather. Every time a similar piece sold for a high price, I felt a rush of dopamine. Every time one failed to meet its reserve, I felt a knot in my stomach. I stopped seeing the watch as a beautiful piece of mid-century design and started seeing it as a volatile stock.

I eventually sold it, not because I didn’t like it, but because the anxiety of owning it had outweighed the joy. I sold it for a modest profit, but after you factor in the insurance premiums and the $444 I spent on a specialized service, I probably broke even. I had spent 34 months worrying for a net gain of zero.

The reality that nobody wants to talk about is the compounding cost of “holding.” If you want to maintain the “investment-grade” status of a watch, you have to pay for insurance. You have to pay for secure storage. You have to pay for servicing at authorized centers to ensure the “provenance” remains intact. Over 14 years, these costs eat into your margins with the quiet persistence of rust. If your $14,004 watch appreciates to $24,004 over a decade, but you spent $4,444 keeping it “investment-ready,” your actual return is far less impressive than the spreadsheet suggests.

And yet, we keep doing it. We keep looking for the “blue chip” pieces. We keep looking for the Saatport perspectives that might offer a glimpse into what truly makes a watch worth owning for the long haul. We are searching for a way to justify the irrationality.

03

The Hall of Mirrors

The market for luxury watches has become a hall of mirrors. We are all looking at each other, trying to figure out what everyone else thinks is valuable, so we can buy it before they do. But value is a ghost. It is a consensus that can vanish in 24 hours if the “vibe” shifts. We saw this with the sudden explosion of integrated bracelet sports watches, and we are seeing the correction now. The people who bought because they loved the design are fine; they still have a watch they love. The people who bought because they thought they were getting a “guaranteed” 14 percent return are the ones staring at their laptops at 4:44 AM.

I remember a conversation with an old dealer in a small shop tucked away in a corner of the city. He had been in the business for 44 years. He told me that the happiest customers he ever had were the ones who didn’t know the “ref number” of what they were buying. They just knew they liked the way the watch felt on their wrist. “The moment someone brings out a magnifying glass to check for a hairline scratch on a case back,” he said, “is the moment the watch stops being a companion and starts being a burden.”

He was right. We have burdened our watches with the weight of our financial anxieties. We have asked them to be more than they are. A watch is a miracle of micro-engineering, a piece of art, and a link to the history of human ingenuity. It is not, and should never be, a retirement plan.

The Freedom of Expense

If you find yourself scrolling through auction results, feeling your heart rate climb with every “sold” hammer price, take a breath. Look at the watch on your wrist. Is it there because it’s an asset? Or is it there because you like the way the light catches the indices? If the answer is the former, you aren’t a collector; you’re just a gambler with a very expensive hobby.

There is a certain freedom in accepting that the money you spend on a watch is gone. Once you treat it as an expense-like a great meal or a trip to the mountains-the pressure evaporates. You can wear it while you’re washing the car. You can let your kid try it on. You can experience the 144 tiny perfections of its movement without worrying about the 14 percent dip in the secondary market.

04

The Wisdom of the Mark

Helen T. called me yesterday. She’s working on a new project, 44 miles offshore. She told me she finally scratched the bezel of her watch while she was tensioning a bolt. “It looks better now,” she said. “It looks like it belongs to me.”

That is the ultimate “investment-grade” outcome. Not a number in a ledger, but a mark on the steel that proves you were there, that you lived, and that you didn’t let a spreadsheet tell you how to spend your time. We are all moving toward the same end, and our watches will keep ticking long after we are gone. The question is whether we spent our 84 years watching the time, or watching the price.

I hope you choose the time. I hope you choose the scratch on the bezel and the story that goes with it. Because at the end of the day, a watch that hasn’t been worn is just a cold piece of metal, no matter how many commas are in its valuation. Let the speculators have their plastic coffins and their price guides. Give me the watch that has seen the world, even if it’s currently down 14 percent in a market that doesn’t know the first thing about what it means to actually own something.

The next time you’re tempted to check the “current market value” of your collection, try checking the time instead. You might find that you have more than you think. And if you’re looking for a community that actually appreciates the craft rather than the flip, places like Saatport are the few remaining sanctuaries where the gears still matter more than the gains.

I’m still learning this. I still catch myself looking at the “market” now and then. But then I remember that accidental video call, my coffee-stained shirt, and the 14 executives. I remember how much better it felt to just be myself, messy and unindexed.

I look at the watch on my wrist, the one with the tiny ding at the 4 o’clock position from the time I hit it against a doorframe while carrying my daughter. That ding probably cost me $444 in resale value. To me, it’s the most valuable part of the watch. It’s the part that says I was actually there.