Watch Yourself!

Dena and I were on vacation last week. My watch started to act up, and lost half an hour, nearly causing us to miss our transportation to the restaurant. So, while I was poking around Cruz bay the next day, I looked at some watches. The prices were pretty good, because St. John is a duty free island. I didn't pay a lot for my new watch, because, frankly, I can't afford it. However, I do appreciate good stuff, and some of the watches that were available were pretty expensive.

So I got to thinking about high end watches, and my perigrinations took me to some interesting web sites featuring watches for rich dudes. It seems that quartz watches, while very accurate, are down near the bottom of the pecking order. Some automatic (Self winding) watches are further up the line, and beleive it or not, Manual watches are among the most expensive watches you can buy. There was one automatic that I came across that listed for $300K. Frankly, I just can't relate to that kind of luxury.

But, these beauties are amazing. For example, in the Lange watch below, the thinnest washer for the balance screw is the smallest and lightest part in a Lange movement. It has a diameter of 0.4 millimetres, a thickness of 0.01 millimetres, and a weight of 8 micrograms (0.000008 g). In other words: 125,000 of these washers would weigh one gram. Imagine! These watches have quite a few parts. How many? 556 parts. If the parts of the chain were to be counted, the total would be 1097 components. So that's just over $99 dollars per widget. Which is more than I paid for my watch!

I present a sampling of my research for your enjoyment and amazement.