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The recent swoon in cryptocurrency valuations "has directly impacted pricing of luxury watches from brands like Rolex and Patek Philippe," said the company, which is based in Karlsruhe, Germany, and has more than half a million watches listed for sale on its website...
At the same time, Stracke said trading volumes on the platform, which links dealers or private sellers with buyers, have jumped more than 50% in the first half of the year.
The price of a Patek Philippe Nautilus 5711A, which sells for about $35,000 at retail, surged to $240,000 in the first quarter, according to Chrono24. Now the blue-dialed steel sports watch is fetching about $190,000 [...]
But why the soaring demand in the first place? In addition to crypto and stock-market gains, stimulus cash bolstered the secondhand-timepiece market, one segment of the larger luxury-goods market, which includes handbags, designer sneakers and fine jewelry, among other high-cost items. Rampant inflation and the war in Ukraine contributed to their appeal, as buyers sought tangible stores of value.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Friday August 05 2022, @02:28AM (4 children)
We should take a moment to marvel at the fact that you can get a smartwatch with a 64-bit dual-core or quad-core [notebookcheck.net], 1-2 gigabytes of RAM, and 16-32 gigabytes of storage. And there is no barrier to having a "decent" octo-core, 4 (8?) gigabytes of RAM, and 1 TB of storage (largest microSD and UFS package capacity on the market, and a new round of denser 232-layer [anandtech.com] and 238-layer [anandtech.com] NAND dies were just announced).
These specs may be largely useless other than for spying on you, but they will continue to climb over the next decade. Maybe becoming more useful with those holograms.
Also, we have been stuck at 18 gigabytes of RAM (the China special) in smartphones for a while. It's high time for 24 gigabytes. For reasons.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 05 2022, @04:37AM (2 children)
"Smart" watches are a great big throwback.. You gotta "wind" (charge) it every day.. How.. um.. quaint!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday August 05 2022, @07:00AM (1 child)
Take it off your wrist before you sleep, place it onto a wireless charger.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 06 2022, @03:27AM
Yeah, something else you gotta drag to the Notel Motel every weekend.
Now the watch requires two pieces
The most advanced watch in the world is self winding, and solar, they're pretty cool
(Score: 2) by turgid on Friday August 05 2022, @07:44PM
It'll happen with time. Luckily there are people with more money than they know what to do with who drive the market for these things so eventually the technology becomes a commodity and the rest of us can afford it. We just need to keep inventing the toys for these people to buy.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].