This week, the Palexpo facility in Geneva, Switzerland, will become the center of the watch world for the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie, or SIHH, a luxury watch show rivaled only by BaselWorld in relevance and prestige. We’ve got a team on the ground, there to bring you the most exciting releases. Follow our coverage here, and also be sure to check out Instagram. We’ll be posting to our feed throughout the week.
Value takes on a new meaning in the world of high luxury watches — especially at SIHH, one of the world’s premier watch events, a land where brand booths are places of worship for gold-cased tourbillons that cost as much as a house.
In the past several years, a struggling European watch market has been pushed to explore a growing segment of Americans and others who are ready to graduate from watches that cost $1,000 to watches that cost $3,000 or $5,000. But now that market slump is over, and within that shove from the invisible hand, there’s less reason to expect such fun, truly affordable gems. Still, if you look closely, you can find them.
It’s important to note that when we talk about value at a place like this, we don’t mean low price tags. (Again, we’re speaking in many cases about house-priced watches.) Value here means bang for your buck, which in a horological sense has a lot to do with not just paying for an impressive name or a big-ticket complication when others have done it just as well for less. In previous years, we’ve found deals that included an $11,000 member of the “Big Three” and a Panerai for under $5,000. This year, even though the pickings seem slimmer, several deals have caught our eye, including a watch that offers extreme accuracy at a lower cost than usual; a classic pilot’s watch getting a shiny new movement made in-house; and a Montblanc for about $3,000 (and for less than $2,500 in steel).
Montblanc 1858 Automatic
Montblanc’s hit the nail on the head with its 1858 line: this is serious vintage-homage watch territory, but without excessive “fauxtina” and straight-up copycat looks. No, the 1858 Automatic, at 40mm and with Montblanc’s MB 24.15 movement inside, is everything you want, and nothing you don’t, for just a little more than $3,000. (Not to beat a steel horse, but it comes in that metal for about $2,400, too.)
