In watches, where does ‘luxury’ begin?

Anything under $999 is low quality crap for poor lazy idiots. 

Anything over $1000 is pretentious overpriced crap for the 1% scum. 

Much discussed topic here and Adrian Barker did a nice video on it too. Technically one could claim all watches are a luxury, but in terms of luxury goods? At the cross section of exclusivity, quality, and cost.  Most Omegas are premium products, but since literally anyone with a credit card can buy one there is almost zero exclusivity. Those with the means want a level of exclusivity. Someone once said this about Coach; “I don’t want to show up to the office in the same bag my secretary has.” It’s crass, rude, and Coach is a perfectly fine product, but that is the reality when drawing the line for many.

I’d argue Rolex is more exclusive and harder to obtain that say most of the VC catalog despite costing less, but they are no VC. They never intended on being a luxury product, but It turned into the luxury brand of Luxury brands. Ferrari, Harry Winston, Hermes, Koenigsegg, etc. all have similar traits.

Does that take away from other premium brands? Absolutely not. Many widely available brands could be argued better in many ways, but if you ask the wealthiest what defines luxury; good or bad, exclusivity is a leading factor. 

I think Adrian Barker mis-represented “difficult to obtain” in his video. I think Rolex is exclusive right now, but thats not the same. It is reserved for a certain clientele. Difficult to obtain luxuries would be things which require distant travel or importation. There are resources dedicated to procuring it. 
 

All that to say that any three-hander north of a few thousand is a luxury. It is unnecessary adornment beyond the expense required to perform any tool function. 

I think you’ll define what luxury is to you along the way. It is subjective and dependent on and individuals perspective and experience. 
 

To me it’s a watch that you aspire to own or did so before purchasing it. Something that makes you feel a bit special when you wear it. 

Just outside your reach. There it begins, until infinity.

It’s all relative. I posted my SMPc in a raw denim subreddit and was chastised by one user over my “display of ostentatious wealth”. 

I agree, Rolex is hard to get right now not because Rolex is exclusive, it's hard to get because it's not exclusive enough. With cheap interest anyone could walk into an AD put their name on a list, then buy the watch on a line of credit when it arrived. 

When it hurts and you have to really think about spending that much on a watch, it’s a luxury.

Well, I think we can all agree that you’re clearly the worst... but I’d say that was harsh!

And, SMP? Nice :)

Honestly a good reality check.

Luxury is in the eyes of the beholder. 

Things other can have but you can't. Or, things that you can have but others can't.

So Luxury is that thing you can never (or stretch to) attain?

Once you start moving past 300-500 quid to be honest — even at that point, it’s in the same price area as most basic entry level jewellery that serves a purpose (wedding rings etc) or video game consoles and entry level television sets of a standard sort of size.

 No one would argue that a video game console isn‘t a luxury, because unless you review games for a living, it isn’t a necessity. It contains an element of keeping up with a peer group for sure, for taking part in a certain subculture… all exactly like watches in higher price brackets. 
 

There are basic watches that do all you could require in the 5-70 quid range, everything after that is usually a purely aesthetic matter. Expensive watches for a certain look, or because they are automatic/mechanical (and since the advent of quartz those are absolutely about an aesthetic or artisanal choice and no longer about function) and again about an element of fashion or subculture. 
 

Once you start leaving the confines of the Argos catalogue, once you start entering into the world of going to speciality stores, then you are in luxury territory. Omega is just as luxury to the vast majority of people as AP, or Cartier, etc etc. The difference between a watch costing three thousand and one costing three million does not really make much odds in those regards.

Even an Apple Watch, as ubiquitous as they may now same, is basically a luxury consumer electronics product — albeit one a bit easier to get, because people will get it on credit with their phone (smartphones by this point in the developed world being a necessity, albeit an expensive one) and there are significantly cheaper smartwatches available. (I got my first Fitbit cut-price in Sainsbury’s.)

The idea posited that all watches are luxury products because people will usually use their phones radically overestimates how far phones actually have penetrated our lives. There are plenty of times and places where that isn’t an option, and watches are still peoples de facto time-telling tool. I think it’s something Adrian talked about in his video, which was still a commentary that — definitely for want of a better description, and with no insult intended — came from a place of privilege in many ways. 
 

Ironically, it’s something I think TGV has a better handle on in his videos in some ways.

So yeah, once you get into triple figures, it’s already becoming a bit of a luxury, and by the time it’s at four figures, it definitely is.

I think that it is more a temporary situation in both ways. For you to get that thing could take forever, unfortunately, but things change quite often. When you get that thing, it will still be luxury as long as it is something you can have, but others can't. Ah, probably for that guy, who had what you couldn't, that item may not be luxury anymore. And so forth...

A watch itself serves a purpose but if you can get the same function with the same quality in a cheaper presentation then the more expensive one can be perceived as a luxury.

Whatever costs as much as a new microbrand to repair. 

“I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it..."

Didn't think I'd get to paste that quote twice in a day.

 In my opinion, "luxury" is a very broad and difficult categorisation, far more than "affordable". Take, for example, cars; a Mercedes C-Class is by all means a luxury car from a luxury brand, but it's still much smaller and more acquirable than a S-Class. And yet a basic trim level S-Class is yet again, worlds away from a Rolls-Royce or Maybach. All these cars are considered luxury cars because their sticker price and exclusivity is far in excess of what you need from a car, and yet what a lower-income working class person considers a luxury car will be very different from a wealthy doctor, and so on for someone who has grown up in the company of millions of old money dollars.

 Basically I think anything north of $1000 is a luxury watch, because the higher prices start to reflect brand identity, precious materials, and form-over-function traits rather than just the cost of manufacturing a watch. Some may have the bar even lower, but I think you'd struggle to really justify calling a more expensive watch 'not luxury' when they can't even tell time better than a plastic Casio.

Tissot, Hamilton, Longines are all considered luxury brands.

if it is hard to get / very exclusive, superior  quality and finishing, and too expensive for you (it is subjective) then it is a luxury

999.99 is the Sweet Spot

In today's world luxury is what is handmade . The more human hour goes into It the more luxurious the item is. Look at Konstantin chaykin for example, no store , no prices , each watch is individually hand made and priced accordingly . Or kudoke, how often you see movements being engraved like that  for 15k?

2) regarding omega and rolexes etc , of course they are all luxury it's just a lot of ppl are wearing the date justs and seamasters .   Though I believe that snoopy is hell of a more luxuriou watch the a Daytona.It's a standard luxury not an exclusive one.  Ull feel cool but u won't be the only one with  that feeling ) 

P.s. one last thing , luxury is what's true and real , not a marketing company that makes  1 million watches a year and creates a "shortage " strategy that lets ads sell the items twice the retail to ppl that made money on bitcoin . Oh yes they will be dumping all these watches now cuz that crypto boat has been rocked hard in the past week .

Why is the idea of luxury even an issue? I am probably in a sample of one but I don't crave any sort of luxury - watches, cars, houses, whatever.

You won’t be alone, no. Although I suspect it’s not so clear cut in all honesty.

Congratulations on your recent milestone and that’s a beautiful (luxury?) Longines!

So the supply/demand scarcity in itself creates the mystique (or illusion) of luxury? More hype than substance, as it were.

I don’t ‘crave’ luxury but I really enjoy it when I have something of quality that has required a lot of effort to obtain (not just the waiting, but the earning of the tokens needed to pay for it).

I, for one, would love a Daytona, but I reckon rocking horse poo would be easier to find!

To me there are at least four definitions of luxury that exist in parallel:

a) The marketing term. "Luxury" is simply used to justify a price that is higher than average, or is used to justify features that don't necessarily increase the value. (We finished the rotor, now this is a luxury watch.)

b) Luxury in the sense of scarcity. The price is high because the object is hard to obtain. Whether this provides any additional value is debatable, and often the scarcity is a artificial. The market for celebrity-designed or endorsed sneakers is a good example. Rolex would not fall under artificial scarcity, but a brand strategy that is focused on long-term slow growth, not short-term fluctuations in demand. 

c) Luxury as a positional good. The fact that you can afford an entry-level BMW, whereas your neighbor drives a Honda. You are choosing a product do distinguish yourself, a behavior probably learned in high school. This is highly related to an aspirational good, where the motivation is mostly internal and not external.

d) Luxury as an exception  - You can only afford to go to a sit-down restaurant once a month. This is a luxury to you, not because sit-down restaurants are scarce, but because of your personal circumstances.

Sure the debate on whether something is handmade factors into whether an item can be considered a luxury, but from my perspective only indirectly through scarcity. It is simply not mass-produced. For example, Rolex production is rather highly automated, but that results in a very high-quality product, because a human is just a source of contaminants, when seen from the perspective of a watch movement.

All I'm trying to say is that the definition of luxury will remain fluid. 😉

Hi Grunka, thank you very much for your good wishes on me and Mrs Munky's 50th. 

The Longines Conquest is going very well, thanks and I'm enjoying it very much. I think we can call this one  or 'more pleasant than many others'. rather than 'luxury'.

I think that it's all relative, and each of us looks at "luxury" differently depending on our own personal circumstances. Reminds me of the old Monty Python sketch "Four Yorkshiremen" where Graham Chapman responds to one of Michael Palins comments with "Luxury...."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue7wM0QC5LE

Agree to disagree - you’re a refined sort now. Ain’t no shame in it. A man of refinement (by proxy) :)

Welcome :)