Nowadays even retail prices for luxury watches are far overpriced.

The whole point of Luxury is to be overpriced and therefore beyond the reach of the vast majority of us, otherwise it's not Veblen goods or can be defined as Luxurious.

IMHO

In line with just about everything else, watch prices have increased accordingly. It is a good time to sell, a collector can take advantage accordingly. The best thing to do now is to wait for prices to correct and/or wait for stuff on the secondary market (Preowned).

The only reason I didn't choose the crazy price option is because relative to everything else it isn't crazy.

Like many goods they also faced cost increase trend. My moto ( with watches and other goods, especially luxury ) is to buy what you can afford and not what you think you should have. As long as their sales numbers are positive it will continue but as always the market will determine what a "fair" price is and who can survive this price increasing situation.

They would not be luxury goods if they were not overpriced. that's the whole idea behind luxury.

Luxury is elite by definition and much depends on your personal financial situation. For instance, a billionaire would think Breuer, Vacheron Constantine or Patel Phillips is luxury. Rolex, to pedestrian. For those of lesser means, Rolex and Omega are representative of luxury. Under that, Tag, Hamilton, Oris and the like represent luxury. See what I am saying? They are all considered luxury by somebody.

BYW, price increases, while a bitch, are totally in line, imho.

But listen! What's that sound? It's the sound of an upcoming crash!

Watches are priced according to what people will pay, not how much they are worth. If you ask me, paying more than $100 for a watch is paying more than a reasonable amount. I'm just not one to often listen to reason 🤷🏼‍♂️

It depends, I suppose.

First of all, everything has become way more expensive this past year, it's crazy. Personally, I still have to get used to it when I see a price of what could be anything.

Secondly, if a watch/item sells for over retail, is it too expensive at MSRP? Maybe, but the public clearly disagrees.

And lastly, I think we don't really appreciate how much effort and time goes into making a watch. At some point you have the best watch a maker can make, but that's unfinished. Then the artists go to work and spend countless hours to make it as pretty as possible.

Pricing of luxury watches has next to nothing to do with the cost of production. Even hand crafting at Swiss labour rates. They are Veblen goods where increases in price result in increases in demand because of perceived exclusivity. I.e. The opposite price/demand behaviour from a normal good.

Hence the importance of marketing spend to create and sustain that perception of exclusivity and underpin demand.

With a luxury watch the market is willing to pay that price to buy into an image and lifestyle, just like other status symbols - Bentleys or handbags etc.

Not my cup of tea because it is perceived as vulgar in my culture and background but each to their own!

Don't buy into that handcrafted gimmick to justify pricing- I've looked at the movements of these luxury watches and while beautiful, these do not justify the multiples they charge over the normal movements. Same goes for casing or bracelets. At a certain point, the differences are really minimal. They are just pricing them out of the normal folks to keep their so-called exclusivity. At least for me, there's no special difference wearing iwc, breitling, omega, or cartier, over apple watch tag casio or timex. I would imagine the same for rolex vc or patek, once I get an allocation of course (another gimmick)