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Comment by Alex3917 | Hacker News Reader

Watches are a good example of the fact that, past a certain point, the only thing you can really do with money is paying other people to do your hobbies for you. Like you could learn how to make mechanical watches yourself, but wait, no, why not pay someone else to take up that hobby for you.

At the same time, if you actually like doing your own hobbies then money loses its utility pretty quickly.

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After skimming through a large portion of George Daniel's book "Watchmaking", if anything, I very much appreciate how complicated making a mechanical watch is, and even more so, how easy it is to get things wrong. From what I saw, you have to have a lot of tooks to make your own mechanical watch, and it would not be something I would want to do without someone skilled in the craft.

That is a long way of saying, I am confused on how making a mechanical watch is a "hobby"?

> it would not be something I would want to do without someone skilled in the craft.

I mean how is that different than any other hobby? I've never made a watch but I forage for mushrooms, and you wouldn't want to do that without being skilled in the craft either. It's pretty much the same for any hobby; the whole point of having a hobby is to become skilled at some esoteric thing.

I would assume one could become skilled at mushroom foraging much, much faster and with much, much less tooling than creating a watch movement.

Sure, but anyone with 500k to buy a watch can surely afford to buy the tools.

ok, sure they could? I don't get your point. The entry point to buy a mechanical watch isn't $500k USD. I have a 1860s mechanical pocket watch that I purchased for $60.

I’m all about DIY, my thought process when buying something usually goes like so:

“Huh, this is pretty pricy, I bet I could make that” and about 50% of the time I actually make it, the other 50% I find it on sale and buy it then…

But just because I can make things doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate someone else’s work. I can paint, but I still buy artwork from other artists.

Sometimes it’s just about appreciating other people’s work.

> the whole point of having a hobby is to become skilled at some esoteric thing

Hobbies are activities done for pleasure, nothing more.

Like many things in the present day, a mechanical watch of the quality or provenance being discussed in this article is not something that can be built in one’s spare time as a hobby, which means consumption is the only option for some truly interesting wrist baubles. And even though I refuse to call watch collecting a hobby, doing so doesn’t preclude one from having other hobbies or interests where one may take on a more active role. The reality is some people can afford to have nice (or stupid) things while also having balanced fulfilling lives.

In my experience hobbies are typically far more expensive than paying someone else to do it purely due to economies of scale.

Not for veblen goods

But the value of Veblen goods is based on paying for the real thing. If you build yourself a Rolex equivalent as part of your hobby it still won't be valued as a "proper" Rolex even if it was just as good quality-wise.

I'm a newbie on this subject. can you really make your own watch? don't you need to buy all the pieces for it? or need a blacksmith shop or something? how much would it cost for someone to build a watch from scratch with no workshop or prior pieces on hand?

What people call watchmaking is actually usually watch assembling/repairing. As you say, you would need to be a good part of an entire supply chain to be able to make a watch in any real sense.

If you are curious on actually making a watch movement, I recommend looking at George Daniel's book "Watchmaking". It is a very well put together book, but is also very technical.

I mean I can paint a picture but it's not going to be any good, and I don't think I'd want to put it on my wall.

My kids won't want it when I die either.

That's with <$100 of materials...would you spend thousands on precious metals when you have no idea how to run a watchmaking lathe? a truly handmade watch takes around 5,000 hours and that's if you know what you're doing.

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