I see your point. That is a good explanation.

However, it is better, to me, than making themselves a charity so they pay no corporate income taxes (with very little or no discernible charitable works), spending millions (sometimes, multiple millions) on singular ads, and jacking up prices on steel sports watches so they stay in high demand and have an undeserved status.

The Rolex Submariner is a great watch, but it is just a very good mechanical dive watch. It is not $7500, even though I don't think you can actually buy it for that low these days.

If Rolex made only precious metal watches, I actually wouldn't have a problem with that, but they persist in selling steel sports watches for luxury prices, and their value comes from the perceived value of the brand, not the watch.

It is in the favour of Rolex now, but it can go the other way too.

And in this case (the Swiss Icons in particular), it was all bullshit, since Moser also has a very limited design language.

That is true. I like watch companies that show a wide range of designs and prices. It allows one to compare their watches and see what you get. Casio and Seiko are good for this. You can see when a watch is overpriced, or a tremendous value, because you have a lot of data to go by.

Seiko makes a basic mechanical watch for $50-100, modern basic mechanical watches for $300-500, and so you can extrapolate what a $2000 Seiko, or a $200000 Seiko would be. Swatch Group brands are also similar, at least, if you exclude some of the outliers.

If you work back with Rolex, it is hard to see them being able to make a functional watch for $100. Their baseline is so basic, yet, so expensive.

Even if you compare it to Tudor, you see that the Rolex name itself is very expensive.

And if you buy the brand name, you are just paying marketing costs.