A finer weave makes them a lot smoother, lighter, and more flexible, which is useful in really hot and humid climates. The guy in the shop said that the daily progress for such a hat is adding about a centimeter to the hat each day.
I guess if you have the money it looks like a good deal, I can't imagine spending $15,000 on a hat but then I can't imagine spending it on much of anything (a car perhaps).
There is a huge divide between a $10 and a $1000 watch. One is a simple Quartz battery-run watch. But when you start talking about mechanical and automatic watches, your looking at incredibly intricate micro-scale engineering. (You may be able to say the same thing about intricately weaved hats, but I wouldn't know.)
You can get a decent mechanical watch below $500, but you're almost definitely looking at a Seiko.
I wouldn't bet on a watch as an investment, but if you spend $3,500 on a good quality Omega Speedmaster or $35,000 on a (low end) Philippe Patek, it's a solid bet it will retain its value over time. I wouldn't bet on it increasing in value better than a Vanguard index fund, but...
Source: I love researching watches and clocks (especially centuries-old clocks) and find mechanical movements to be engineering works of art. I don't personally own that $3500 Omega Speedmaster... Yet...
Making an LCD is no small engineering feat - it just happens to benefit from enormous economies of scale.
ljw1001 was comparing watches by their ostensive purposes, telling time, but the hats by something else.
Beyond that, mechanical watches are like art or classic cars - you can "invest" in them, but they are more status symbol and one-upmanship than investment...
For a certain value of "decent"...
http://watchguy.co.uk/review-a-trip-inside-the-swatch-sistem...
Names like Benrus, Elgin, Orvis, Oris, Hellbros, and a buch of ETA movements, with obscure names, are great watches, and one day just might become more collectable than they are presently?
These mechanical watches were worn by the working man. They all had great movements. I repair watches, and I can't tell the difference in quality between Rolex movements and most Benrus Movements on the older models.
Once you have a basic set of tools, and a little bit of knowledge on these old watches; you really start to see the beauty/value of old mechanical watches. With me--it started out as a hobby, to maybe a career? In the near future I am coding two websites devoted to watchmaking. One will be just about watch repair, and watch information. The other will be my personal business website where I will sell and service watches. I wish I got interested in Horology when I was younger? The bug didn't hit me until 10 years ago, when I got my first IWC cal. 89 watch. The guy who sold it thought it was a Timex. He sold it to me for $5.00. Well I got it cleaned, and oiled, and has been on my wrist ever since. It's so old the letters on the dial are completely faded, so it doesn't even look like an expensive watch. I wear it in the worst parts of town. I am the only one who knows it's a extremely well designed/machined piece of watchmaking history.
So yes, I think vintage watches will go up in value. I hope not for awhile--because right now I can still get good deals on EBay. I just got a Omega Seamaster for a little over $100 dollars. When I get it running it will make a great watch for someone? A watch that will never be thrown away? A watch that can be handed down to a loved one?
That said it's nothing to do with the spec of the phone and everything to do with the look of the phone, everyone in their set knows that the phone costs 7 grand, they know that you know that they know etc.
- Vacuum tubes
- Wire wraping
- Core rope memory and some magnetic core memory.
Where it gets even more interesting is when you NEED craft for advancement. The most entertaining case I can think of is this one: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/neil-armstrongs-spaces...
http://www.thecredits.org/2013/09/bras-in-space-the-incredib...
Eh, for a lot of those, the thing you are buying is the... immeasurable something you get from it being made by hand. Uniqueness. What someone like me might call flaws.
My Toyota van is gonna be way more reliable than a Maybach Landaulet. It can haul more, too. Hell, if I got a more expensive Toyota, say, one of the faster lexus LS models that is more in the shape of the Landaulet, it wouldn't even be much any slower, and the LS is, if not affordable, at least realistic for your average silicon valley tech nerd.
I'm not saying that a Lexus LS really compares to a Maybach Landaulet in the market or in people's minds; it doesn't. One is like $70K and the other is like one and a half million. But the strongest objective advantage the Maybach has is simple exclusivity; There are a lot of Toyotas on the road; a lot of the value in the Maybach is in the process... and the process that makes it rare.
Objectively, I would easily argue that the Maybach is worse. It's going to be vastly less reliable than that Lexus. and certainly, for telling time, your $10 drug store watch is vastly superior to your hand-built analog wrist-art piece.
And if you want to get fancy, even the cheapest cellphones these days come with time synced from GPS satellites. (GPS is fucking amazing. One of those things where the more you learn about how it works, the more amazed you will be that it works ever at all.)
So... yeah, I'm not saying there isn't value in having a hand-built art-piece; sometimes, there's a whole lot of value. And if you've got that much money, why do you really care what time it is, anyhow? But I am saying that you're going to have to search pretty hard to find an example where the hand-built example is objectively better at fulfilling it's ostensible purpose (e.g. transporting people and telling time) than something mass-produced by machines.
Sometimes there is just no viable explanation for human behavior.