Watch Repair: an Investment or an Expense?
Whether you should view the fixing of your watch as an expense or an investment depends on one thing only – the value of the watch. As a rule, the repair (and maintenance) of any watch whose market value increases with time should be viewed as an investment. But market value is not everything; many watches carry a sentimental value that exceeds their market value. Caring for a watch that you have inherited and intend to pass along to your children is obviously an investment. The watch your grandmother gave you may cost more to repair than to replace, but you may feel that it is well worth the investment. Almost all older (usually mechanical) watches with a sentimental value can be fixed – because they were designed that way.
All mechanisms, including watches, need maintenance. To minimize the investment cost, you should always maintain watches that are valuable to you. Don’t wait until they need to be repaired. Neglecting to service a valuable watch, especially an older watch, can be a very costly mistake.
How often your watch needs to be serviced depends mainly on the watch’s water-resistance level and whether you use it frequently. Old wrist and pocket watches with unsealed crowns let dust and moisture into the case, causing the parts to wear out. These should be serviced about once a year. Watches with water-resistant sealing may only need to be serviced every five years or so (to replace the oil), as long as their owners respect the inscriptions on the case back (‘100 meters’, or whatever). Quartz analog watches also require routine servicing to lubricate the mechanical part of the movement.
Watch repair is skilled labor, which is always pricey. Moreover, the number of qualified, highly-trained watchmakers in the U.S. has fallen significantly over the past decade (American Watchmakers’ Institute), increasing the cost – and the time needed - for proper watch repair. If you value your watch, make sure to service it regularly. If it needs repairs, pay the price and consider it an investment. After all, “You can have it fast, perfect or cheap, but you can’t have all three.”
Well, maybe you CAN! Notwithstanding technological advances (automatic watch-cleaning machines and other sophisticated repair machinery), basic watch repair skills have remained more or less unchanged over the past 300 years. These skills continue to revolve around taking a watch completely apart, inspecting its parts for damage, cleaning, hand-oiling, fixing any broken, worn or missing parts and, for watches over 150 years old or so, making parts that are no longer readily available, such as winding stems or even escape wheels.
Unaffected by the passage of time and the advance of technology, competent and significantly less expensive watch repair is still available in many poorer countries. If you simply cannot afford the cost of repairing a watch that you really value at home, consider taking it along with you on a trip overseas. You may be pleasantly surprised at how fast, cheap AND perfect your watch repair investment will be!
Tags: pocket watch repair tulsa ok, brace repair for guess watch with model g13005g, sieko watch repair, watch repair colorado, kenneth cole watch repair, elgin pocket watch parts repair, watch repair manuals