Crown & Caliber
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Hamilton Powell, CEO of online luxury watch market Crown & Caliber, told Business Insider about the many pitfalls of buying a watch.
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Among his advice, Powell told us that you shouldn't buy a new watch as an investment, as the vast majority will only depreciate in value.
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You should also match your watch to your lifestyle, not the other way around.
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Powell advises buying a watch that has a narrative — like a pilot watch — that can become a talking point in itself.
Buying a watch can be a total minefield.
There are seemingly infinite combinations of straps, materials, movements, frequencies, indices and lugs — whatever any of that means.
As a result, many people leave the shop with a watch they're not really content with — but that doesn't have to be the case, says Hamilton Powell, CEO of Crown & Caliber, an online market for pre-owned luxury watches.
Powell spoke to Business Insider about the biggest mistakes people make when they're buying a watch, and what they should be doing instead.
1. Buying a new watch as an investment
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When reading headlines of outrageous, million-dollar Rolex sales at Christie's, it can be tempting to buy an investment timepiece of your own — just make sure it's not new.
"95% of modern watches that you're buying these days are not going to be investments," Powell told us. "If they were, the brands should never sell them in the first place, the brand would just sit there and hold onto them."
Powell compares the watch market to the car market: "The second you drive it off the lot it loses value."
By buying a pre-owned watch, you're skipping that initial depreciation hit that the original owner has taken.
2. Buying a watch that your friends like
Your watch should be a reflection of your tastes, not the tastes of your friends or your favourite blogger.
"Buy a watch that you like to look at every day and you think is fun," Powell says. "You're going to have to wake up to that [watch] every day and if you don't like the look of it then you're going to get sick of it pretty quickly."
3. Not matching your watch to your lifestyle
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It's no use having a delicate, vintage watch if you're a lumberjack. "Some watches are meant to be really taken care of," Powell says, and if you live a gritty kind of lifestyle then there are certain timepieces that you should avoid.
For instance, he says: "If you like to be outdoors and you're kind of rough on a watch, you can't wear a minute-repeater," which is a mechanical feature that, in the words of Mark Bernardo (digital media editor of WatchTime magazine), "transforms a watch from mere timekeeping device to miniature music box," by chiming the time down to the minute.