I would never own a rolex because where I live only ambulance chasers, businessmen who are definitely guilty of wage theft, morbidly obese elderly men in gold chains who reek of cigars, and street pimps wear them but from what I can gather they charge approximately $1,000 for a service and a mechanical watch needs servicing every 5-10 years depending on how complicated it is and how often it is worn.
So that's like a $100-200/yr. annual subscription to wear an already expensive watch.
Assuming I take your anecdote at face value, I'm quite impressed at how well you keep tabs on all of the Rolex owners you've met, identified their occupations as well as illegal or immoral activities.
I've seen people wearing watches, but hell I have hard time identifying the brand of watch, let alone where the person wearing it works.
It's pretty easy to spot a Rolex once you know a little bit about them. Get a closer look and it's even easy to spot fakes.
However, I agree with the first part of your comment in a way, but it's really not that hard to get a rough estimate of someone based on how they choose to present themselves. They didn't exactly get forced into that look.
That's a valid argument, that some stereotypical appearances are relatively consistently accurate.
Though I'm wondering what, exactly, defines the appearance of a specific lawyer who pushes for accident victims to sue, or businessmen that participate in wage theft. How do you tell them apart from... other lawyers or random people wearing suits?
I'll say this though, when it comes to corpo execs, at least in the USA, if they think they can get away with some illegal and/or unethical activity and they believe that it won't impact any potential profits (either greater than the punishment or benefits to themselves, because we rarely if ever jail executives in this country or hold them accountable without immense public scrutiny), they'll do that thing 9.9 out of 10 times.
Wage theft is rampant here, especially for lower wage workers. The government simply doesn't exist in a capacity to actually prevent these things, and people in general are too apathetic to other peoples well being, let alone engaging in appropriate political discourse, that the needle rarely moves forward for your average citizen.
I taught myself how to service Swiss watches this month. It’s a very difficult skill (I failed).
The people who did the training and have the surgical ability to fix a Rolex deserve $1000.
An elaborate precision machine that is 35mm across and hand-built over a year (so they say), it makes sense that “cheap” Swiss watches are $9000. Rolex retails for 2-4x of that due to brand cachet and artificial scarcity, even though they are by far the highest volume manufacturer.
The nm of chips doesn't mean anything anymore, and it's really not more impressive anyways - that's built by a machine, which is the epitome of precision. A hand-built 2nm chip might be more impressive, but also impossible anyways.
I don’t think an equivalent Omega or Breitling is that much cheaper?
Rolexes also keep their value incredibly well. I bought a nice Tag many years ago (I knew nothing about watches) and it’s now worth about $1000 on the used market at best. Had I bought a similar priced Rolex instead, it would have kept its value, if not even appreciated.
It's beyond what is the watch. Rolex is good, but omega speedy starts (started before inflation/tariffs?) at $5k. And is certified for Space(tm)! Some good smaller brands (nomos) at around $2k.
Watch market above that starts getting weird. You have some special models, technically equivalent w/ cosmetic bling hitting $80-100k
Does Rolex have other revenue streams aside from overpriced watches?