Luxurious watch-owning pals of mine are at all times put out by how a lot it prices to service a mechanical watch. The tone is at all times the identical. “I spent £5,000 on this watch three years in the past, took it again in for a check-up, and so they need £500 for a service. 5-hundred quid! That may’t be proper. Can it?” Properly, sure. It could actually. And relying on the watch, it may be much more than that too. Servicing a mechanical watch, even a easy one, is the hidden value of possession. As a result of it’s a lot costlier than individuals anticipate, watch servicing provokes ethical outrage, like a stealth tax. It creates that very same feeling of powerlessness, too. “If I don’t get it serviced,” those self same pals fluster, “they are saying my watch may cease – and that will value much more to kind out. How am I going to elucidate that to my spouse once I’ve promised her every week in Tuscany subsequent summer season?!” and so on. I can perceive this. The primary time you come head to head with the realities of watch servicing it does really feel like somebody’s pulled the wool over your eyes. With a automobile – so typically a watch comparable – you realize you must pay to get your brake mild mounted, as a result of in case you don’t, you may get arrested. You additionally know that in case you don’t change your tyres, you’re enjoying Russian roulette together with your life. However it’s completely different with a watch. Until you’re negotiating with Columbian drug smugglers, a watch is sort of actually not going to avoid wasting your life. There’s no gun to your head obliging you to pay for a service. And also you wouldn’t be the primary to eschew coughing up one other cash-wad in case you chanced it – there’s at all times your cellphone, in spite of everything. This, although, is the place proudly owning a mechanical watch may be very completely different to proudly owning a automobile, and far more like proudly owning a canine. (A canine with pedigree, clearly.) It’s a accountability. It asks one thing of you. Not as a lot as a smartwatch – that will make it an irritant. And also you get again what you give. Patek Philippe’s now 20-year-old strapline (that ‘you by no means really personal a watch…’) could over-romanticise watch possession, however the level about you ‘taking care of it for the subsequent era’ isn’t solely fluffy advertising and marketing. Are likely to it correctly, and a correct watch can be one thing your kids’s kids bear in mind you by. My grandfather died 20 years in the past, however I nonetheless have his Rolex.

To place the price of servicing in perspective, it helps to grasp how a mechanical watch works. Inside a watch – whether or not it’s a £400 Hamilton or a £100,000 Roger Smith – is an escapement, a tool that regulates the best way a mechanical motion makes use of energy. The escapement holds a steadiness wheel that, in most watches, vibrates eight occasions a second, or 28,800 occasions an hour. That’s what makes the ticking sound. Assuming you put on your watch on daily basis and preserve it wound, that’s greater than 250 million ticks a yr. Nonetheless paying consideration on the again? Finally, these shifting elements begin to wear down, which is why your watch wants a service. In a service, a watchmaker takes a watch to bits, cleans its tiny elements, replaces them the place mandatory, relubricates them after which places the entire thing again collectively once more. This requires ability. Add in a case polish to get out these dings and scratches, and the identical for a bracelet in case your watch has one, and you start to grasp why a watch service may cost greater than a few pints of lager and a bag of pork scratchings.

What’s additionally necessary to grasp is that watches want servicing fairly often. The traditional knowledge on service intervals for a brand new watch is three to 5 years, however privately senior model people will admit that the time to move your watch to the boys in white coats is when it begins under-performing, at any time when which may be. Simply don’t depart it too lengthy. However regardless of how justifiable, there’s no escaping the truth that servicing is a corrosively costly enterprise. The excellent news is that manufacturers are starting to cotton on to client frustration and ploughing their reserves into growing watches that may go longer between providers. Advances by the likes of Rolex, Omega and even Tissot are not less than taking among the sting out of long-term possession. Rolex’s latest improvements embody Calibre 3255, launched final yr. It’s extra environment friendly, shock-resistant and anti-magnetic than the corporate’s earlier actions, however in the intervening time it’s solely obtainable in Rolex’s Day-Date 40, a watch that solely is available in treasured metals (with worth tags to match). Some of the important issues about that motion was that Rolex slapped a five-year guarantee on it, and stated that it might go as much as 10 years between providers – an unprecedented declare from a mechanical watchmaker. Then, in June, it quietly ushered in a brand new period for the corporate, attaching the identical guarantee and really helpful service intervals onto each new Rolex watch. I don’t need to overplay this growth, however that is massive information for the person on the road watch purchaser.

Rolex isn’t alone in pushing watchmaking expertise. Omega’s new line of Grasp Chronometer actions options numerous low-maintenance shifting elements, some in silicon – watchmaking wonder-stuff that’s low-friction and subsequently requires no lubrication. These include a four-year guarantee and wish servicing each 4 to seven years. Tissot, which makes 4 million watches a yr, has additionally simply launched the Ballade, an on a regular basis timepiece that turns into the primary mechanical watch with silicon elements to retail for below £1,000. All optimistic indicators. So, sure, there’s no getting away from it – servicing a mechanical watch prices just a few bob. However it’s cash effectively spent. Until, that’s, you need the legacy your grandchildren bear in mind you by to be a lock of hair and a entrance tooth.