#watchmaking

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If the time traveller walked into a Patek Philippe boutique and actually tried to buy a Nautilus, he'd get the biggest shock of all. They wouldn't sell him one. Because at Patek he'd encounter the most extreme brand age phenomenon: artificial scarcity. You can't just buy a Nautilus. You have to spend years proving your loyalty first by buying your way through multiple tiers of other models, and then spend years on a waiting list. Obviously this strategy sells more watches. But it also supports retail prices by keeping watches off the secondary market. A company using artificial scarcity to drive sales can't allow too many of the scarce models to leak into the secondary market, or they stop being scarce. The ideal is the watch equivalent of carbon sequestration: for the people who buy their watches to keep them till they die. To push the market toward this ideal, Patek squeezes from both sides of the sale. They weed out flippers by making the path to the scarce models so costly in both time and money — so inconvenient and unreasonable — that only a genuine fan would endure it. The lower tier watches sell for below retail on the secondary market, because Patek doesn't restrict their supply, so a would-be flipper should have to spend years making money-losing purchases before he could even get something he could flip at a profit. Apparently some people still manage to beat this system though, so Patek's countermeasures don't end there. They keep a vigilant eye on secondary sales to see who's selling their watches. Auction listings usually include serial numbers, so those are easy to trace, but if necessary they'll rebuy their own watches on the secondary market to get the serial number and trace the leak. They buy hundreds a year. And when they catch someone selling watches they don't want them to, they don't just cut off that customer. If a retailer's customers are responsible for too many such leaks, they'll cut off the whole retailer. Which naturally makes retailers eager to help them police buyers.

Very cute screws from a watch i worked on on thursday

Took this pic bc that pocket watch has an escapement i haven't seen irl before, only in books, and real instead of lab rubies (not done anymore these days) but the RETARD really hits every time

My boss at my internship loves me and is giving me tips on how to start bc he runs a family business and is absolutely willing to partner with me in the future if i wanna work freelance in that field, which most ppl that specialize in bigger clocks do

calendar watch, ca. 1650, by Thomas Alcock

“Watchmaking Explained” by Kalle Slaap, Chronoglide – First Impressions and a Quick Review