you guys are still largely missing the mark.
The movement in that Panerai was made in Switzerland by a guy named Sven who went to university for 3 years then apprenticed for 2 years with ETA SA in the same division that his father and hie father’s father worked in and where thier wives and mothers work in the office or in marketing. The assembly of the movement takes 3 hours and 200+ individual steps known by heart in a lab-coat labratory with high precision equipment that is made from just as high a grade of material spec as the components of the watch itself.
The company goes back hundreds of years and the brand is managed by men and women who would lay their lives down for it.
The movement in a Citizen Eco-drive is made by a farmer in china who moved into the city because droughts from the smog that is created by over-manufacturing made it impossible for him to feed himself and his 5 kids (only 3 of whom will reach adulthood… the boys). He works in an upscale sweat shop and worked his way up to assembly from garbage detail after 3 weeks in training which consisted mostly of upgrading the dexterity of his fingers and learning how to read diagrams written on on the back of old fax paper from a dot-matrix printer that is in a pile of old printers in the bathroom (alley) out behind the building.
He can’t pronounce citizen and wont make in a year what it costs to buy one used in a pawn shop where all citizen watches end up after 3 years for $50 OBO.
Appreciation for craftsmenship, legacy and old-school innovation is why swiss auto’s keep their value and why they will always be awesome even if a battery powered Tommy Hilfiger watch, assembled by the chinese farmer during the second half of his 12 hour shifts when they switch the logos on the same watch movements from citizen to TH, keeps better time.
Kind of like how a Corvette Z06 is faster than a Ferrari F430… but the corvette is made on an assembly line by unionized, over weight middle american men who get drunk on thier lunch break (worse than chinse farmers) whereas Ferrari is the equivalent of a high end swiss auto.
Guys who know that pick up on it when you have an awesome watch… Guys who appreciate that are worth connecting with. Women who appreciate that are probably hot.
i swear we went through this a couple times in this thread already.