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Comment by ksaj | Hacker News Reader

A Rolex is likely still working if you buy it at an antique market. Apple, not so much. They'll be non-functional and useless well before they could be even considered a 'classic.'

Even old Casio watches from the early 80's have Apple beat on that measure.

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if you're after a good time piece, the cheapest Casio F-91W watches are actually better at keeping time than any mechanical watch. I had a few growing up, the straps broke before anything else, and replacing the whole unit was cheaper than getting a "proper" watch serviced.

Not to mention a Rolex appreciate in price as time passes.

Apple watch lose value and become e-waste.

Some Rolexes will appreciate, but not all. Knowing which ones will appreciate is like art or cars. Especially at the entry level you'll most likely be fighting for grey market prices.

"It's an investment" is usually just a cope for people who can't actually afford the watch and don't want to sound foolish.

> The average price of a pre-owned Rolex watch increased from less than US$5,000 in 2011 to more than US$13,000 by the end of 2021, according to a report by the California-based firm published earlier this year.

https://www.barrons.com/articles/over-a-decade-rolex-watches...

Even if the price of a specific watch slightly declines (unlikely given statistics published), it sounds much better than a 100% chance to become eWaste in the case of Apple watches.

On the other hand, if you had taken 10% of that $5000 and spent them on an Apple Watch[0] and put the other 90% into Apple shares, you'd have bought fractionally over 346 shares in 2011 which would have been worth $48,804 in 2021.

[0] keeping the money aside for when the watches were actually released, which wasn't 2011.

I'll keep that in mind the next time I get the urge to spend extravagantly.

The article is about rolexes gaining value over a particular decade. The idea that those 10 years will just happen again (that it's not in a bubble and this is sustainable) is a foolish gamble imo. Basically everyone pushing this is an SEO blog for some watch merchant, keep that in mind as well.

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