Some Say Seiko Watches are Overpriced. I Disagree

A few years ago, some astonishingly good deals were to be had on new Seiko watches. I myself bought Seiko 5 with a canvas strap on Amazon for under $50 in 2016. It's a variation of the 5 which first went on sale in 2008. It was my first purchase of a good watch in decades, after I'd spent more several times for watches which were real pieces of garbage by comparison. This is my Seiko 5:

There are many like it but this one is mine. I noticed that it had a price tag on it which said $185. Since then I've noticed MSRP's of $195 and $225 for watches which are identical or identical except for color.

For a long time I assumed that there simply was a huge disconnect between this watch's MSRP and the reality of its marketing. The way that Invicta watches sell for 25% or so of their MSRP, making for hollow drama, repeated daily from scratch, on home-shopping TV shows.

Recently, however, I heard that there had been a huge glut of these Seiko 5's, and the gap between the MSRP's and the selling prices, and some other things, began to make more sense. Seiko had simply made much too many of them, and the only way to move them was to offer them for prices which under ordinary circumstances would have been impossible. 

The intended retail price had been much closer to the MSRP, as usual with Seiko and with most watch brands.

I had not been the only one who had bought a Seiko for an amazingly low price. A price so low that it was actually very hard to understand how it was possible. Many people bought them at those prices. Many people got used to these amazing prices, and perhaps relatively few noticed the prices on the tags, or thought much about how the low prices had come to be, or have yet to realize that they benefited from an unusual market situation.

Seiko stopped making 5's like mine a long time ago, I don't know how many years ago, but I have watched the prices going up as the word gets around that there won't be any more. They cost about twice what paid now, and the prices keep rising. 

In the meantime, Seiko announced that they would be concentrating more on higher-quality watches -- a clear indication that Seikos were going to cost more. Seiko did come right out and say: "We made too many of those old 5's, that's why they're so inexpensive. We can't afford to actually keep making them and selling them at these prices, nobody could." Instead, they started making a completely different line of 5's. Even the "5" on the dials of the watches is completely different now. And they are substantially improved technically. 

The prices tags haven't changed very much, though: Seiko 5's start at $275 now, up from $225. If you compared MSRP's it could be very easily argued that Seiko is offering more value per dollar with the new, bigger 5's with their improved movements.

But of course, people don't compare price tags. They compare what they actually paid back then to the actual prices now, which tend to be 75 to 100% of MSRP, as usual with Seiko over most of the course of its history, as usual with watches in general. And what looks to me like a return to normal pricing after a freakish market situation brought on by overproduction and a market glut, looks to many other people like greed on Seiko's part.

CNBC and Fossil Watches

A recent CNBC piece looked at the recent struggles of the watch brand Fossil. They skyrocketed to success in the 1980's with cheap disposable watches disguised as quality products, and in the last few years their revenues and stock prices have been plummeting.

Fossil watches (and the other watch brands Fossil manufactures such as MVMT and Michael Kors) are crap -- disposable crap made for a couple of dollars per piece and sold for $50 and up. That MIGHT be relevant to their recent struggles. 

 

Maybe Timex, championed in this ridiculous CNBC segment as a return of affordable quality, can be considered something other than garbage, but only when compared to something like Fossil, or like the mechanical watches Timex made up until 1981. In the whole piece, there was no mention of:

-- Seiko mechanical watches. CNBC mentioned that Seiko introduced quartz watches in the 1960's, but not that they are known, from before the 1960's to the present day, for offering good value for mechanical watches.

-- The many small independent brands who are competing for the low-priced end of Seiko's market share ($50 to $200 or so), as Seiko prices go a bit upscale.

 

 

-- G-Shock, quartz watches made by the Japanese corporation Casio. Most G-Shocks cost under $100, a few really fancy ones cost low four figures. 

 

The CNBC piece attributed much of Fossil's trouble to the Apple watch. There have been over 100 million Apple watches sold. There have also been over 100 million G-Shocks sold. True, G-Shock has had longer to do it, they started in 1983, but they're a force in this market.

What Seiko, many smaller brands looking to take over for Seiko in the market for inexpensive ($50-$200) mechanicals, and G-Shock all have in common is that they offer QUALITY products, and good VALUE for the money.

But you know what? I don't watch a lot of CNBC. I'm criticizing them for running a story about the watch industry without knowing much about watches, but maybe I'm the one who's being naive here, when I insinuate that things like quality products and reasonable prices are relevant in the financial news.

Open Letter to the Urban Gentry

You recently gave some advice about dress watches on your You Tube channel and I'm confused: a Richard Mille is wrong because "it draws attention to itself," but the most intense 5,000,000,000-watt design by Swatch is very, very right because it "catches the eye and can be a great conversation starter"? Is it a matter of price: eye-catching and inexpensive is fine, but if it's expensive, please tone it down? I realize too that Richard Milles are sometimes also quite large, but I feel as if there's more going on here than size. Full disclosure: I haven't yet seen a Richard Mille irl, maybe if I did I'd instantly understand what upsets so many of you about them. (Ditto for Hublot.) 

   

 

 

More full disclosure: I'm 6'3" and have big wrists, situated between big arms and big hands, and maybe I'm just a tiny bit defensive about remarks about big watches. Okay -- there's no maybe about it, and it's more than just a tiny bit. For some people, clearly, in some situations 40mm is starting to risk being a bit too big, but just remember: for other people, in some situations 40mm can sometimes be a bit small.  

I myself am quite daring in my fashion choices: for example, I like to compliment a tux not only with a huge shiny Seiko diver, but also with a scuba mask, oxygen tank and flippers. If the host's or hostesses' feelings are hurt by the thought that I might leap into the ocean at any moment and swim away 10 meters below the surface, well then, maybe he or she shouldn't have invited me to begin with! Not everyone fits at every kind of party, I quite agree.

The World of Watches

 As my brother said to me,

"Some people would tell you watches are anachronisms."

Those people would be entirely correct. As more and more watch enthusiasts are admitting to themselves, the only rational reason to have a watch is because you enjoy having it. And as if that weren't already enough, the watches which 999 out of 1000 hard-core watch nuts really like are mechanical watches: all power provided by an unwinding spring, the way all watches were before the first quartz watches were introduced in the 1960's. Mechanical watches keep time much less accurately than quartz watches. There actually are a few mechanical watches which keep time better than some quartz watches, but we're talking about extremely expensive mechanical watches and cheap junk quartz watches.

This is not utility. It's art. 

 

 

Women have shoes, men have watches. Sure, it's weird, but hey -- life is weird.

Smart watches, from Apple etc, don't do a thing for me. As far as I'm concerned, they're just smart phones on the wrist, and I already have a smart phone. I don't feel the need to have 2.

I've actually always been into mechanical watches. I still have 2 Timex mechanical watches made no later than the 1980's. Could be 1970's. They both stopped running long ago and old mechanical Timexes can't be repaired any more than Bic lighters can be. If memory serves, they cost $8.95 or maybe less. At Walgreen's. Actually, I have 3 Timex mechanicals: I bought an automatic Timex at a yard sale in Alaska for $2. It was made in 1979 (I looked up the serial number), and it ran for quite a while after I bought it.

But all Timexes, old or new, are crap, despite the 1 in 100,000 which runs for 40 years. The new Marlin is the first mechanical watch sold by Timex in quite a long time, and a lot of people who think they're experts on the subject of watches are going crazy over it, but they're fools. You can get 6 new mechanical Seiko 5's for the price of one new Marlin ($300 and a long waiting list, unless Timex has ramped production way, way up since the launch a couple of years ago), and each Seiko would be a far, far better watch.

But the new $300 Timex Marlin reminds all those people of the Timexes they (or their Dads or Grandpas) bought at Walgreens in the 60's and 70's for $5 or $10. Timex are evil geniuses at marketing. [PS, 22 Feb 2021: I really must apologize. It would've been so easy to check BEFORE I published. It appears that the MSRP for the Marlin has fallen to $199, that it is often on sale for less than $150, and that it is now offered in a variety of colors besides the silver which gave the original its name.]

in 1990, in Germany, I bought a mechanical pocket watch for about 60 Marks -- about $40. I don't remember the brand, but it felt really solid. It seemed like a quality product, the way well-built watches feel. Then back in the US it was stolen, and I bummed over that for a long time.

A few years ago, the only watches about which I could find any info were Swiss watches costing 4 figures and up, and pure crap costing less, and antique pocket watches which are not always very expensive to purchase and which often keep very good time when they're running, but which require a lot of expensive maintenance. Plus a lot of quartz watches, which almost never interest me. Then I happened to see a headline in a Google search saying, "The Most Affordable High-End Watch." I was skeptical, but I clicked on it, and it was an article about a Seiko 5 that cost $45. Calling it "high-end" was tongue-in-cheek -- -- but only a little bit. The article explained how this $45 watch had a lot of the qualities prized by guys who buy extremely-expensive Swiss watches and was an insane value.

So that was  how I was made aware of Seiko, and it opened up the world of watches quite a bit to me. And now I'm one of a billion a-holes trying to make a living writing nonsense about watches on the Internet.

The watch world has its own rules and customs. It's different from the car world. One example of many: vehicle manufacturers loan vehicles to periodicals, which sometimes praise the vehicles and sometimes trash them. Watch manufacturers loan (or sometimes secretly give) watches to periodicals, and in return they expect that the reviewers will not write anything bad about the watch, or only enough tiny bad remarks to keep convincing readers that these are actual reviews. There is very little honest journalism about watches. The vast majority of people posing as watch reviewers amount to paid advertisers. And all of the experts in the watch world know it. And it doesn't seem it's going to change soon. And so, sadly, since I can't bring myself to write even more nonsensically than I already do, it seems that I will NOT soon be showered with free luxury watches. (Unless I become a huge fabulous superstar.)

Seiko

More and more people are coming to the opinion that Seiko, a Japanese company, is the world's greatest watchmaker. 

 

For about a century, after the American watchmaking industry fell apart, Swiss watches have generally been regarded as the state of the art. Three Swiss brands, Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet and Vacheron Constantine, are often referred to together as "the Holy Trinity," reflecting the opinion that they are as good as it gets. Recently, however, Jaeger-LeCoultre, a fourth Swiss brand, has been mentioned as being equal to or even better than the Holy Trinity, as has A Lange & Soehne, which is not even Swiss, it's a German brand, one of several in the small town of Glashuette in the former East Germany.

And then of course are the many, many people who say that Rolex is the best. We laugh and pat them on the head and get back to what we were discussing before they interrupted us. Rolex watches are good. They're not the very best. And they're overpriced. And even if you pay full MSRP for a new and soght-after Rolex model, you're going to be on a waiting list. For years, sometimes. 

Why? Because when you ask most people to list off luxury watch brands, they'll say, "Rolex... Uhmmm..." If people literally don't know that your competition exists, you will outsell your competition.

And then there's Seiko, which is a bit different from all the other brands mentioned so far. All of them are exclusively luxury brands, offering watches for four figures and up. Some people are surprised to hear Seiko being compared to Swiss luxury brands, because they believe that Seiko make inexpensive watches.

And they do. The thing is, they make luxury watches too. You can get a Seiko for $50, or $500,000 or at every price point in between. That alone makes them unique. What makes them great is that they offer the best value at any price point. You can get a great Seiko watch for $200. By "great" I mean, quite simply: better than anything else on sale for $200. You can get one for $400. Or $1000. Or $5000. Etc. And in each and every case, the Seiko will be the best that can be had for that much money. 

Tissot says, "They say a high-end Swiss mechanical watch can't be had for less than $1000. Let's keep proving them wrong." Audemars Piguet says, "People who are willing to spend $10,000 for a watch look to us to provide the ultimate in horological luxury. Let's keep refining and deepening that experience." And both Tissot and Audemars Piguet are both accomplishing great things. But Seiko says, "Let's keep beating everybody at everything." They're not just in their own league. They're playing a completely different game.

How do they do it? Experts are mystified. Seiko don't skimp on materials. They don't run sweatshops. Their highly-skilled employees are compensated as well as they would be at other firms.

I'm taking a guess here: maybe Seiko's prices are the best because they have a firm policy that their prices will be the best. Maybe, before a Seiko model is introduced, Seiko looks at the prices of comparable watches, and offers their for less, period, whether they're taking a big loss short-term or not, and it all comes out all alright for them because the prices are one of the reasons for Seiko's huge sales and extremely loyal repeat customers.

Seiko 5 vs Almost Anything by Swatch

It's Enten – Eller Time again at The Wrong Monkey!

To people who are really into watches in a big way, the Seiko 5 is legendary. If you talk to, say, 100 experts on watches, and ask them which brand gives the most value for the money, and which model is the very best bargain at all, you won't necessarily get two sets of 100 identical answers -- but there is no doubt, no doubt whatsoever, that the brand which will get mentioned most often is Seiko, and that the model which will get mentioned most often is the Seiko 5.

The question is, to how many people who are not into watches in a big way will this matter? I'm just going to assert that people who are into Swatches --

-- in a big way, are rarely into watches in general in a big way.

Those of us fascinated by watches in general are mostly men. Think of it this way: women have shoes, we have watches. There are some men who have huge collections of shoes, and some women who have huge collections of watches, but not many. Most of the watches sold by far are men's watches, just as most of the shoes sold by far are women's shoes.

I'm not sure that most Swatch owners are men.

Those of us fascinated by watches in general tend to be very much interested in the functionality of the watch. Mechanical watches -- watches which are powered by springs, springs which are wound either manually or, in the case of what is known as an automatic watch, are wound by the motion of the wrist of the person wearing the watch. Most mechnical watches sold these days are automatic -- almost always interest us more than battery-powered watches. We're interested in accuracy, precision (those are two different things. You probably already knew that or probably don't care), reliability, unusual features which made not be at all visible unless the watch is taken apart -- function, function, function. You want to get a watch enthusiast's heart racing? Show him a watch which you wind up and it runs for 5 or 10 (or 30, or 50) days before it needs to be wound again, that keeps time within 1 or 2 seconds per 24 hours, that will probably run for 100 years without being serviced, but don't speak of the watch going without a routine servicing every few years unless you want to cause the watch enthusiast pain.

Almost all Swatches are battery-powered, and don't open up for servicing, so you just throw them away when they stop running. Both the batteries and the throwaway aspect make them much less interesting for us watch nuts. A few years ago, Swatch finally introduced its first spring-powered watch, the Sistem 51, and we watch nuts leaned forward in great interest -- until we learned that the Sistem 51 didn't open up, cannot be repaired, and then most of us leaned at least partway back again. Then a couple of years later Swatch introduced the Sistem 51 Irony, which opens up. At last, there is a watch from Swatch that a lot of us would consider buying.

Still, though, it's just the one model, and Swatch continues to make almost all their watches battery-powered and disposable, so they're still really not about us. Which makes it rather hard to get very enthusiastic about them.

However, Swatches look absolutely amazing. Here, look at some more of them:

Nothing else on Earth looks like Swatches. Even those of us who are into mechanical watches can see that. And that, quite obviously, is what Swatches are all about to most of the people who own them.

So why am I telling you all this? Because, a little earlier, an acquaintance of mine expressed an enthusiasm for Swatch. I was about to tell her that, for about as much money as a Swatch, she could get a Seiko 5, and that if she wore a Seiko 5, any watch geek who saw it on her arm would immediately find her interesting.

And then I thought -- does she have any desire, at all, to be interesting to watch geeks?

And I simply couldn't convince myself that she did. Indeed, it was pretty easy to imagine her being creeped out by the idea of drawing a lot of attention from watch geeks.

If I became extremely knowledgeable about shoes, would that make me more interesting to women? Oh well, it's a rhetorical question, because I'm not going to become extremely knowledgeable about shoes. If a woman were extremely knowledgeable about watches, would that make her more attractive to me? I'm really not sure that it would. In fact -- based on the few women I've known who are real watch aficionados, I'd have to say: it makes them neither more or less attractive. To me. Perhaps it makes them irresistible to some others.

An Open Letter to Hodinkee re: the Hamilton Khaki Field Mechanical

You want me to get excited about the Hamilton Khaki Field Mechanical, a new item in your online shop.

And maybe I should be very excited about it, I don't know.

I know that the Hamilton 992b pocket watch, made from 1940 to 1969 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was an outstanding watch in its time, maybe the one truly outstanding model made by the American company (the 992 and 992a, as well as most of the other models made by American Hamilton since the late 19th century, didn't quite get it right). But 1969 was a long time ago, and I don't know squat about the current Swiss Hamilton brand except that it's one of the many brands owned by the Swatch Group. Does it really have anything in common with the old American brand except the name and the look of the dial?

And even if it has a lot in common with the old American brand, does that mean that a new Hamilton is as good as a new watch from a quality Swiss brand? Horological technology hasn't stood still for the last 50 years. A good new watch tends to be much more durable, reliable and waterproof, to name just 3 things, than a good watch made in 1969.

If all of you watch journalists didn't tell me to get excited over each and every watch you write about -- with the lone exception, as far as I know, of the Watch Snob® at askmen, who goes perhaps too far in the other direction -- then I actually might get excited about watches even more often than I already do, which is very often.

Just not about every single watch. Your recent rave review of the new overpriced mechanical piece of crap from Timex, to name one egregious example, was not helpful in this regard. You wrote that even if it's not a great watch, hey, it's only $200. For some of us, $200 is actually a lot of money which we'd rather not throw away if we can help it, especially not when $200 will get us several perfectly good mechanical watches from Seiko. And for a watch enthusiast for whom $200 really isn't a lot, it still could be $200 toward the price of something like a nice Longines, which might cost 5 or 10 times as much as the new mechanical Timex, but will look much nicer (because it's the actual item which the Timex [American English for "fake Rolex"] is trying to resemble), keep much better time, last far longer than 10 times as long as the Timex, etc, etc.

But that's the sort of advice one never gets from watch journalists, with the exception of the Watch Snob, and for all I know, he has to remain anonymous because if any of you wrote what you really think and it were known who you were, the entire industry would banish you and you'd never be able to write about any new watch again unless you bought it, and, unfortunately, not all of you can afford to spend a million Euros a year on watches, year in and year out, because life is unfair. I realize there must be reasons for the current state of affairs, and I don't think that people who write about watches are bad people.

But until some of you buck the trend and start writing in a much more straightforward manner, how will things ever change?