Horolonomics

This post started to form in my mind when I hit "search" on Instagram and out popped a picture of a curious item. The Heuer photocell in question. Credit @heuercollectors It looked like a closed-circuit camera. It was in a striking shade of red embellished by the Heuer mark and stood atop a black tripod. The poster, @heuercollectors, offered a caption: ... I bumped into this wonderful red colored racing track device, a heuer (sic) formule (sic) 1 photocell. Just couldn't resist buying it from a friendly Belgian owner. I can't find a lot of information on these devices so all additional info (when, where, how it was used) is very much appreciated! Challenge accepted. I almost immediately began to understand why the original poster was having such a hard time learning more. A metal tag on the base of the object provided a "Mod" number which read 2-21. I couldn't find anything about that model but I did find a model 2-31 photocell that loo...

The watch industry has seen a fair bit of dynamism in recent years. An ownership share in Breitling has, apparently, changed hands. Richard Mille turned down an offer from Kering and, instead, Mille's children are taking an increasingly prominent role in the business. The publicly listed retailer Watches of Switzerland (WOS) is expanding geographically and diversifying their porfolio to include vintage . One of the more significant developments, though, is definitely the acquisition of the retailer Tiffany's by the luxury group LVMH. This change in corporate ownership, alongside the departure of a prominent salesperson , created some murmurs about whether a longstanding relationship would continue. The temptation to pull Patek Philippe from display cases and replace the crown jewel of Swiss watchmaking with one of LVMH's own brands may prove simply too tempting for Tiffany's new owners. Would Tiffany's and Patek Philippe find a way to continue their relat...

This post has been subconsciously rattling around in my head since the very early days of Horolonomics. Never leave your wingman. For some reason it coalesced into something a bit more substantive over the past few days. The TLDR on this is that the existence of Veblen effects in the luxury watch market implies there are probably multiple equilibria. The economics of markets with multiple equilibria is quite different than the textbook view of markets. In such markets, expectations and herd behavior are extremely important. These can quite significantly change the price of a product, even if all market fundamentals are stable. Before we explore these results, let's begin with some first principles. Most markets follow the law of demand: as price goes up, the quantity demanded of a product declines. As I've discussed previously , luxury markets are different. They typically "break the law" when it comes to demand: when price increases, people may actuall...

Dr. Robert S. Dietz was "one of the most irritating as well as influential geologists of the 20th century," at least according to a 1998 piece published in The Geological Society of America Memorials . Robert Dietz scuba diving in Japan, 1953. Source: UCSD archives. The same piece notes that, "a mountain in Antarctica, a tablemount on the Pacific Ocean floor, and an asteroid somewhere in orbit between Mars and Jupiter," were all named in his honor. This is the story of a period of time in Dietz' life and the watches he owned during that time. I first encountered Deitz' story when I read a piece by Jose "Perezcope" on the Rolex Deep Sea Special series of watches. The commemorative edition of the Rolex Deep Sea Special. Two examples of this watch are on the auction block this month. They have garnered a fair bit of media coverage. Jose's work is required reading for anyone wishing to learn about the "fog of history" ...

It’s 2021 and the secondary market premium for certain luxury watches continues. There are plenty of Gregory Paus out there, taking a new, highly sought after [insert sports design from century-plus-old Swiss brand] and selling it for well over retail. Highway to the Profit Zone There’s been a collective gasp now that Rolex has found its voice and issued a public statement about the whole matter. That’s how unprecedented the situation is. As an economist, though, the dialogue about flipping is quite reminiscent of two magnets approaching each other with the same poles facing. They get closer and closer and then the forces become too great and the magnets slip away from each other. The discussion over flipping and the secondary market premium is quite similar: we never quite get to the crux of the matter, but we get close. At the end of the day, flipping and above retail pricing on the secondary market are a consequence of many different circumstances. If you leave any o...

Hello again. It's been two months since my last post but there is an issue and topic I thought I'd comment on. It is an aspect to the watch market that hasn't been adequately discussed, in my opinion. But first, an explanation for my absence from this blog. In my last post I mentioned that I paused writing here due to the fact that I was focussed on two long-term projects. I don't write with a pen but I liked this stock image. One is continuing apace, it is a book on Rolex. I can't remember exactly when I started writing in earnest, I think at the beginning of summer, or perhaps halfway through. I was waiting to get responses to some archival requests and I also had to do some in-depth background research from other archival materials before I could start pecking away on the keyboard. I did start, though, and I crossed 30,000 words not long ago. For professional and experienced writers, that may not seem like much. For me, it is the most I've writt...

I've been on a somewhat extended break from posting here because I'm working on two in-depth projects and some regular contributions to another, awesome, outlet. However, recent coverage of the TAG Heuer x Super Mario Limited Edition smartwatch release this week convinced me I needed to post some thoughts. The TLDR on this is that some folks writing about the watch industry need to be way more careful and precise in their writing. Preliminaries and full disclosure: I was initially excited about this watch but disappointed in its execution. Photo credit Pixabay I grew up playing countless hours of Mario and hoped the watch might be a neat commemoration for me and all the folks who enjoyed this game. However, I'm really not into smartwatches generally (I bought a Pebble years ago and it just wasn't worth the hassle of charging) and 45 mm is pretty big for a timepiece. Also, the price on this watch ($US 2,150 at retail) is just not competitive. If others love...

I recently realized that my curiosity about watches is similar to the way a T-Rex' vision works, at least according to the 1993 film Jurassic Park . For those who don't remember the film, Dr. Alan Grant (a paleontologist played by the actor Sam Neil) tells the other characters that if they don't move, the T-Rex won't see them. Similarly, I realized that the rotating bezel is such a permanent (but adjustable) fixture of dive watch designs that I've never actually seen much of its history. Subsequent to attending Jeffrey Kingston's Horological Society of New York lecture on the advent of the first dive watch by Blancpain (required WIS viewing, really), I think I'd naturally assumed that the brand's former CEO, Jean-Jacque Fiechter, invented the rotating bezel sometime around 1953. Drawings of rotating bezel from Fiechter's Fifty Fathoms patent. There certainly were many innovations he patented while dreaming up the Fifty Fathoms, so I subcon...

Last week, I finished user onboarding with a service called CrowdTangle , a startup that launched in 2012. In 2016, Facebook acquired CrowdTangle. In 2019, it opened a service for academic researchers. I recently applied to participate and I was accepted. CrowdTangle provides a wide array of analytic data for activity on Facebook and Instagram. I'm only beginning to familiarize myself with it. Out of curiosity, I decided to get my bearings by looking through the platform's data on watch media. The insights I'm posting here are the result. CrowdTangle's engine reports a wide range of information on public posts and accounts, including followers, reactions (likes, etc), shares and commenting. I began by building a list of the major watch media outlets which have been operating for a fair number of years. I requested feedback on Instagram for my initial list and updated it accordingly (thank you to everyone who commented, acknowledgements below). I ended up with a list...