The Appeal of Wearing a Mechanical Watch in the Digital Age

The year 2015 should be remembered as the Anno Domini (or year zero) of the history of smart watches, but regardless of predictions, these new wrist computers do not seem to be compelling enough to turn the heads of hardcore mechanical watch lovers. Here are five reasons why mechanical watches might still attract consumer interest in a Digital Age.

1. Self-wind mechanical watches harvest their own energy, so there is no need for chargers or power bank. I keep a phone charging cable at home and at work, and a third one with a power bank in my briefcase for the commute. If I forget or misplace one of these cables my phone battery has a risk of dying. I don’t have to worry about any of that with a mechanical watch. A hand-Wound Watch is like the manually wound battery that I keep in my car for emergencies. A few dozen turns are enough to keep it running when I need it.
2. Mechanical watches perform a single task, and they perform it well. Some people eventually grow tired of the convergence (carrying small computers that are becoming Swiss Army knives). I know that I have a scientific calculator on my phone, but still I enjoy using a Casio fx-82 solar calculator. I like the simplicity of using it and the tactile and acoustic response when I press the keys.
3. Mechanical watches are self-explanatory. Watches with a see-through back became popular in the 1990’s, after they stopped being the technological peak of time measurement. It was not a coincidence: people enjoyed seeing how the clockwork works.
4. Mechanical watches are perennial, which is the exact opposite of consumer electronics. A friend asked me to help him repair the beaten up $ 50 Seiko 5 of his late uncle. It will be fairly easy to replace the crystal and gaskets, and if the movement is too run down we will simply replace it. The case might require a quick polishing to make the whole watch look decent again. I cannot say the same thing about smart devices in my household. In comparison, my first android phone is not powerful enough to run the latest OS version, and my wife’s iPhone 5 cannot technically enable voice to text because that feature can only be implemented in the iPhone 6S and later models.
5. Mechanical watches keep a resale value. With proper case and intermittent servicing, a mechanical watch can be kept in perfect working conditions, even after several decades. This means that there is a market for used mechanical watches. Chrono24, one of the major trading platforms for used watch sees yearly transactions of 1 billion Euro. I have been buying and selling mechanical watches over the last 20 years, and when I did my homework I managed to buy a watch in good condition that I sold after several years without any loss. In comparison my compact MiniDisc player is worth nothing because no one is interested in that technology anymore.

Overall, mechanical watches are part of a phenomenon that Canadian journalist and writer David Sax called “The Revenge of Analog”. Consumers eventually realise that the digital or electronic utopia fails to deliver on what it promises, or it comes with a trade off.