It's 2024. Is This The Year Everyone Gets Tired Of Watches?

"How did you go bankrupt?" "Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” Ernest Hemingway, "The Sun Also Rises"

Let me say at the outset that the last decade has been a remarkable one for watches. Just in general, the level of interest that we’ve all seen in watches and watchmaking seems to have grown exponentially – along with prices, unfortunately, but that’s the wicked way of the world.

For anyone reading who’s heard me say this before, I apologize in advance but it’s still true: When I first got interested in watches, there was no Internet and the watch magazines, such as they were, were on the bottom back of the newsstand magazine racks, along with the model railroading and doll collecting magazines (both noble avocations, I ought to add, but I think it’s safe to say that watch collecting’s become a fixture of popular culture in a way that collecting, say, bisque porcelain dolls has not). And now look how far we have come – it is scarcely possible to see a famous sports figure, movie star, or indeed, murderous despot without also seeing an expensive watch on their wrist.

At the same time, it’s hard to avoid feeling that there is something like collective fatigue setting in. Part of this has to do of course with the fact that there has been so much hype around luxury watches in the last few years – to such an extent that both the hype watches, and calling them hype watches, have both become clichés. A few interesting things have happened in the last couple of years, though.

The first is that the long-anticipated correction in prices for pre-owned luxury watches has finally hit, with many of the most popular models noticeably lower than their peak in mid-2022.

The second is that prices for new watches have continued to go up, and up, and up. It is not true that you can no longer buy an interesting watch if you are not a millionaire but it is more true than ever that if what you want is to experience for yourself, the great Swiss or great German or even the great Japanese traditions of watchmaking, you must gird yourself, especially if you don’t buy watches frequently enough to stay abreast of price increases, for a little bit of sticker shock (or a lot, depending on the brand and the watch).

Thirdly, there is the fact that with increased demand, we have also seen – partly thanks to COVID – a decrease in availability, and the waiting list has become more talked about than a lot of the actual watches that people are waiting for. There are all sorts of very good reasons for the shortage in supplies, but the fact remains that spending years on a waiting list is probably not a viable position in which to keep your customers indefinitely – at some point, it simply becomes too tedious, too boring, and above all too depressing, to endure either waiting years for the privilege of buying a watch, or being asked to buy watches you don’t want to establish credentials with an AD. In fact, the whole idea of having to buy something you don’t want in order to get something you do, doesn’t seem like an especially sustainable strategy either. Is it unrealistic to think that a watch should be sold on its own merits, and not on the basis of undergoing some sort of ritual hazing to show your worth? Showing preference to valued repeat customers is one thing, institutionalizing enforced ownership of undesired watches in order to merit access to desired watches is another.

Finally, I think that increasingly, watch brands struggle to make anyone understand why anyone would want to buy a luxury watch at all. In a rational – or less irrational – world, watches would be bought at a price that has at least some relationship to actual quality in construction and content in terms of watchmaking. The last few years have not been a distinguished time for innovation in horology, holding the line in terms of movement quality in construction and finish, or even inventiveness in design. Even in independent watchmaking the preference seems to overwhelmingly be for round, sub-40mm, hand-wound watches which, for all that they may in many cases at least have gobs more real watchmaking content than anything from an established brand, are still basically from a playbook which has been around since the 1920s (in one form or another).

It is hard to avoid feeling as if a lot of the big names in fine watchmaking are at this point, not terribly interested in their own watches (or in fact in anyone else’s). There is still a lot of beautiful stuff out there, of course, and I don’t want to paint an entirely dark picture, because there are still lots and lots of people in the watch industry who do love watches.

But the absence of excitement is palpable – for all that it had its faults, at least Baselworld was exciting, and while nobody misses being gouged at restaurants and hotels once a year as the price of a week and a half of exhilaration, at least we all went home with something to talk about. (This is of course, a singularly joyless time in general, but that is another story, and one playing out in the headlines every day). If prices continue to go up, availability continues to be meager, and brands continue to think of their customers as possessed of both unlimited funds and limitless patience, I can see the industry entering a moribund phase in which it will have to work hard to regain the sense of interest, excitement, and pleasure in ownership which ought to characterize fine watchmaking.