I agree that the differences between these watches are more intangible and personal in nature rather than technical. But long term valuation tends to rely more on these intangibles rather than the technical qualities.
ETA probably makes some of the most ROBUST and ACCURATE movements publically available to the mass market manufacturers. Thus the common presence of ETA movt's in many 'highly priced' and mid-priced brands.
But to me, the characteristics of 'high end' are often very different from 'highly priced' and 'highly desireable'. Often the marketing machines create 'highly priced' which then results in 'highly desireable' for the common person, but in the end. . . . the expensive and hard to find watch still has average horological qualities, that to me does not really fulfill the 'high end' requirements.
In my opinion (and in agreement with you), the slight edge that I give to the proprietary Rolex Movement over the Omega ETA movements has not so much to do with engineering, finish quality, or accuracy (as both are rather average for most models) but rather from the perspective of 'uniqueness' and the purists' pursuit of horological excellence. Generally speaking, a manufacturer who makes all components of their watch in-house deserves a bit more kudos than a manufacturer that assembles reworked parts that are available to others. Although I guess one could argue that ETA is in-house for Omega, but this would be bit of a stretch.
