zOwie Omega Discussion Forum

Opened July 1999, zOwie is the Internet's first and longest running discussion forum dedicated to Omega brand watches.

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Watch Material Cost is Mostly Irrelevant

In Response To: Re: Watch Material Cost ()

: Although it might not be popular to say it, but
: I agree with you 100%. There are other
: aspects of the price politics which I also
: find difficult to comprehend.

Why? Consider that the Mona Lisa was painted using what in modern day terms would be less than $50 worth of canvass and paint. Yet it is worth around a million times the cost of those materials alone!

On art and jewelry, you CANNOT justify the price based on the cost of materials. The intangibles that the creator of the final results adds--from actual craft through to pure reputation for excellence--add over half the total value.

That's the difference between a distinctive luxury item and a commodity item. Commodity items are very common, reasonably to very affordable and can easily be made virtually the same by someone else and few people care.

Distinctive luxury items like fine jewelry and art are valuable because of the unique originality of who does them first or best. Even if someone produced an essentially identical item, many people would still care to pay more to have the original creator's work.

That's why most of us are buying OMEGA instead of similar looking CASIO or TIMEX watches.