Counting The Cost: What Do You Get By Spending More On A Watch?
8 min read
Right now, there’s a very noticeable watch industry trend and that is premiumization. Over the last few years, the prices of watches have only gone up and if I were to find a reason on part of brands charging this much money, it’s simply because they think people will pay that much money. And most of the time, it’s true.
Yes, you’ll find a quality watch in every pricing category, but if quality exists regardless of what you pay, what’s the difference. So, how is it that there exist watches in the same product categories for hugely disparate prices. And as already mentioned, it isn’t necessary that you’ll get a lesser watch at the lower spectrum of spending.
So, I’ll help you make sense of a watch that’s 5x the price of its category’s decently specced entry-level offering. We’ll cover this in parts, one category at a time.
But first, this.
The inefficiencies of luxury pricing
The pricing of luxury watches isn’t always a quality derivative. In general, luxury pricing is inefficient on multiple levels and yes, while there’s a definite factor of feature and finesse associated with high-end, yet the markup isn’t always, well, sensible.
The inefficiency of pricing however plays favorables for buyers in that there still exist pockets of real value, but for that you have to know where to look. Not always is the 5x cheaper offering necessarily 5x a lesser product on paper. It could match in chronometry, durability, and wrist appeal, the most important factors, and almost every time, it trails on part of heritage, longevity, hand-finishing, build quality, material choice, and yes, sometimes hype.
A product with oversaturated cultural relevance doesn’t always merit the inflation in its price. It’s also not necessarily leaps better in legitimate factors of quality determination. That’s more hype-derived and somewhat contaminated owing to critical lack. It’s a fact that luxury pricing falls apart in less hyped watches. Case in point - the Chopard Alpine Eagle 41 XPS in Lucent steel. This is a COSC certified ultra-thin timekeeper with high-horology credentials substantiated by its Poinçon de Genève hallmark for the LUC 96.40-L micro-rotor caliber. It’s yours for ₹ 27,30,000. Now compare that to the listings for what have become the category’s benchmarks. It won’t be easy to justify the premium for the latter.
But, all of this isn’t necessarily a generalized occurrence in the luxury watch industry.
Where there’s more cost involved, there’s actually genuine horological content to justify the premium and while the range of that premium is subjectively perceived, overall, the product does represent a more refined yield of the craft. Also, for watchmaking conglomerates, their operating margins usually range somewhere between 10-20%, which when compared to Apple’s 32%, Microsoft’s 38% and Mastercard with an operating margin of 58.86% don’t seem that obscure.
So, now, let’s decipher how the extra cost of a really high-end watch actually ends up making it a better product over its category’s value-tier option. The category that’ll raise the curtains for us will be titanium sports watches.
Opposite spectrums of a category
Keeping it light, I’ve picked titanium sports watches as the category that’ll decode the differences across a range of parameters between two pieces that stand on opposite ends of the pricing scale. Although titanium has been a watch construction material for about fifty years now, it’s only recently that the metal has proliferated widely across brands, even in very disparate pricing categories, and has absolutely taken off.
Cartier watches are getting serious. The watchmaker is second only to Rolex in the list of Switzerland’s top 50 watch brands by turnover. Despite being nestled within the Richemont labyrinth, Cartier’s watchmaking division enjoys total autonomy with consolidation of all watchmaking faculties and its heritage can be traced to centuries old models. Cartier is a very integrated manufacture with enormous resources, greater economies of scale, a legendary reputation, and genuine catalog strength. Very few watch brands are as integrated as Cartier is today.
In Cartier’s focal of the ₹ 5,00,000 to ₹ 15,00,000 bracket, the ₹ 11,90,000 Santos de Cartier in Titanium best embodies the Maison’s value and laser-like focus in the market. While the current Santos generation dates to 2018, the year-1 of the model impressively was 1904. So, it’s a model with a very hard to beat legacy and actually the oldest one in production even today. What’s more important than the model’s age is its adaptability over the decades.
The 2025 Cartier Santos Titanium Large Model is easily the best and the sportiest version of the 2018 revamped model. It gets a very traditional non-lumed broadsword hand dial with Roman numerals. The grade 5 titanium construction gets a soft and smooth media-blasted treatment mixed with polished bevels. Its bracelet integration allows for an easy swap with an additional nubuck alligator leather strap via its QuickSwitch system. The titanium bracelet however misses on the SmartLink quick sizing feature found on steel models. This is a minor downgrade as a given of the system’s incompatibility with the titanium material.
So, here we have a watch with legitimate heritage strength, cultural appeal, a nuanced but strong wrist presence, and with a matte finish, it really does look the part.
So, there’s obvious value here.
Now A. Lange & Söhne, an in-house rival from Cartier’s parent enterprise Richemont has an obvious high-end alternative in the form of the 2022 released Odysseus in titanium. Back in 2019, the original Odysseus sports watch arrived as a savior for the brand that many respected but few respected enough to buy at its retail prices. A. Lange & Söhne back then was a strictly dress watch only brand with an idiosyncratic house style. Then wasn’t a time of delicate precious metal watches and, although finished to the nines, these weren’t the objects of ultimate desire.
This right vision, wrong era thing had a consequence felt as a large inventory surplus which had to be relieved via huge discounts. The Odysseus changed all of that!
With its launch, the Odysseus drew vital foot-traffic to A. Lange & Söhne and also eased the over-piling stock as purchases to earn the Odysseus graduation which even sparked renewed interest in the brand’s exclusive dress watches. This resulted in an eventual rise in customer willingness in buying the Lange dress watches on their own merit and without a sports watch attached to the package. So, the Odysseus was the necessary impetus that yielded a forward market movement for the Glashütte manufacture. Also, in favor of the Odysseus, it wasn’t another by-product of the integrated bracelet steel sports watch craze but rather a respectable aside with a strong mindset of differentiation visible in its avoids of Genta. The Odysseus was, in my opinion, the ideal response to the market’s demand and in no way another participant in the trend. It is a testament to Lange’s resolve to do things its own way.
The architecture of premium
The titanium Odysseus reference 363.117 was conceived as a 250-piece limited edition with a textured ice-blue dial. When launched, it retailed for about ₹ 45,22,000 and its current worth on the secondary market is easily 2.5x the original RRP. So, a genuine investment-grade purchase.
Both the Cartier and the Lange deliver strongly on part of their positions in their respective catalogs and the wider market in general, owing to brand strength. However, it definitely is advantage Santos when it comes to genuine model history. Also, the German counterpart can’t rival Cartier’s value. But the Odysseus comes storming back with its caliber L155.1 which is a genuine haute-horlogerie yield and noticeably multiple ranks ahead in terms of its finishing. Here, Cartier’s 1847 MC movement tucked beneath a solid caseback brings reason to the pricing distinction and legitimizes its placing at the budget end of the category they share.
The automatic winding L155.1 movement on the Odysseus features finishing that’s nothing less than legendary. Beautifully rendered in the nickel, copper, and zinc alloy of German silver, this movement gets a freehand engraved full balance bridge for better shock protection. Its autonomy comes from a central rotor with a platinum outer mass for efficient winding performance. The combination of mirrored anglage, fire-blued screws, black polished surfaces, intricate perlage, and Glashütte striping on the main bridge serve to be the icing on the top.
While near-decent timekeeping won’t be a task impossible for the Santos, in pure sense of craft, the Odysseus does show its premiumness. The caliber L155.1 offers a level of haute horlogerie decoration on a sports watch that’s usually reserved for high complications. In comparison, the Santos’ caliber 1847 MC is as basic a watch movement can get.
The refinement with the Odysseus however doesn’t end at its movement. It gets a very articulate case construction which the titanium material highlights even more. The exterior metal decoration on the case is done by hand and its design incorporates the hidden day and date adjustment pushers in the crown shoulders. The surface treatment, just like the Santos, is a mix of matte and gloss. The Odysseus gets its polishing done by hand which is also hand applied to each individual link of its bracelet. If we keep score by added features, the incremental adjustment on its bracelet’s clasp is a noteworthy upgrade over the Cartier. Add to the list a multi-layered dial with very practical separate big day and big date windows, and a healthy heaping of lume.
So here, the more expensive watch is undoubtedly a very refined product, and so much so that it elevates the aesthetic, ergonomic, and desirability attributes by multiple tiers. It justifies the cost premium and gives you an objectively much better watch for the buck with legitimate quality increments to justify the premium.
Hence, all the things you gain by spending more on a watch.
