Introduction to Mechanical Watches

Mechanical watches come in all shapes and sizes. You might have seen watches range from a six figure price tag to one at the local Macy's for 50 dollars. What determines the value of a watch? What determines the watch's quality? Are the two correlated?

A mechanical watch is simply a watch that is not battery powered, and rather is powered through manual winding or a rotor that self-winds the watch automatically. A battery-powered (quartz) watch might simply show things like the time, sometimes the date in a semi digital format, but it's quite limited on what it can depict on a 30-40mm dial. 

Mechanical watches carry all types of various functionality, with greater, more complicated movements indicating innovation and the pinnacle of engineering in the watchmaking world. 

These various complications can range from something as simple as a date function (as with the Sovereign Voyager) or even grander ideas, like a moonphase, a perpetual calendar, a tourbillion, or a split-seconds chronograph. 

The quality of materials and finishing on the movement and case also plays into a factor of a watch's intrinsic value. For example, our Voyager line employs fine finishing that is worth well above the price range, but it is pure stainless steel, and lacks the rarity of materials like gold, titanium, etc. However, because of this, it is easy for our company to produce more for the people who want to up their style and are passionate about watches. Our own movement in the Voyager line is a 24-Jeweled, Automatic Seiko NH36/4R36, but we have only used the date function instead of both the day and the date for the sake of simplicity on our first line. 

All in all, when making the decision to purchase a mechanical watch, make sure to understand the details of what exactly you are putting yourself into.