nice gear shift from tooly chrono to dress - hey if thats where you are going why not?

a vote in favour of the ophion (coming from a breitling fan) is that this will also be a 'public' as well as a 'private' watch. what I mean is assuming you personally get basically the same excitement from the ophion and the navi (an assumption) then they have the same 'private' value. but the ophion will be a thing of interest with others in a way a rolex/omega/breitling/cartier never will hence great 'public' value.

of course my personal answer is to never sell, just wait, save and have both.

I kind of agree - but with a caveat - there is no objective POV, everything is subjective, even if the characteristic is apparently objective (say accuracy), the value you place on it and therefore the decision to mention it or not is entirely subjective. For example - some of the things you've mentioned like "value" and "markup" I dont care about but things you've left off like novelty, originality, authenticity, sustainability are crucial to me.

Value is massively important to a Christopher Ward buyer, less so to a Bremont buyer. Accuracy is crucial to a Grand Seiko buyer, barely at all to a Seiko buyer.

So if everything is subjective I believe negatives must be mentioned IF they are relevant to the target market, ie the relevant subject. So deviations from what the target would normally expect are important to note. If a brand has made a name with hand finishing and its sneaking in more machine work, call it out.

ok - never a massive fan of any post leading with 'everyone should' but here its pretty harmless so I'll play along....

I agree, quartz watches can be fun and 'reliable' corner of your collection - like a few here I've got a quartz grand seiko and I'll be getting a Breitling aerospace as my two 'old reliable' GADA watches.

One problem with quartz is that your options get limited fast, once you get above a certain price bracket quartz options just dry up and because quartz is often seen as the budget option, routinely you dont get the same level of design and or finishing. Not always, and its not inherent in quartz, just a tendancy for the market to go that way.

1 Breitling 2000ish to 2017 was a bit dodgy. Some good stuff, some terrible stuff. Their marketing and distribution was awful leading to oversupply and heavy discounting. This was exactly as the online watch community was exploding so it developed a bad reputation at exactly the wrong time.

2 Breitling don't play to the online community media/social media. They are actually pretty dismissive of online media platforms. So less coverage, less hype.

Personally I love them. I've got 7 ranging from mid 60s manual wind chronos to last year's Super Ocean. Comfortably middle weight quality alongside Omega.

alpina, breitling, mr jones, seiko, jaeger l'coultre,

As a few folks have said never is a long time and things change. Likewise I want to stress this I havent had an issue with a single watch in my time in the hobby, no one makes a bad watch (ok, there is a bunch of low end "fashion" stuff I just ignore) but in the foreseeable future I cant see myself buying:

Rolex - just the vibe (universal, incremental, safe, status, success) of the brand isnt something that suit me.

Christopher Ward - again its the vibe, the focus on "value" and "for the price" just doesnt sit with my idea of watches as luxury.

G-Shock - I was issued g-shocks as part of my airforce equipment and again it just feels like a high viz vest and safety boots as gear not a watch.

Cartier - just an aesthetic thing - not really my style.

Pagani Design and their fellow travellers in that 'homage' space - I dont do that market.

LV have had a mega exclusive off catalog, private client thing going for a few years. Now it's just coming into the light. The thing about these watches:

They are designed to appeal to 10 people in the world.

They are generally sold before they are even made.

Personally I kind of like them.