zOwie Omega Discussion Forum

: It's my understanding that it costs the
: watchmakers about $250.00 a watch to get the
: COSC Certificate.

Not true. Realize that the entire movement in most luxury watches costs under $150 to make -- including the COSC certification. The actual COSC testing is only a few dollars. The main reason why many mechanical watch makers don't have their watches COSC tested is NOT the raw cost, but merely that it doesn't do much to increase actual sales.

Main reason OMEGA does it is because their #1 competitor ROLEX does. If OMEGA didn't, they would lose sales to Rolex simply because the uninformed masses of buyers falsely assume that the COSC certification is tangible proof of superiority. Hell, Rolex gets tons of mileage over the competition off their trademarked "Superlative Chronometer" designation, which doesn't mean diddly as their watches go through the *exact* same COSC test and are held to the *exact* same COSC specifications as any other watch. But average buyers, lacking any real and tanglible assessment as to what any of these certifications actually mean, simply go for the best-sounding credentials.

The number of $250 is about what the premium that watchmakers charge at the retail price level for watches that have the certification.

Remember, we're talking JEWELRY here, not technology. So the pricing rules are vastly different. Trying to compare true cost versus market value gets really wild, as most features of luxury watches are priced at the retail level many times their raw cost.

My favorite example is that the only technical difference in an all-steel watch selling for $2,000 and its twin in solid gold selling for $15,000-20,000 is that the case and bracelet are made of $15 steel versus $800 worth of gold. This means that (in a highly simplified analysis), the $785 differential cost of the 18K gold over the steel is marked up 2300% at the retail level!