Cody does an interesting series on recovering precious metals using different chemical approaches. I have learned a lot from the videos, mostly that it is not worth the effort or expense to bother.
Obviously very few, far less than 1 oz, even in a watch as large as the one there. And that's not pure gold either. Think of jewelry. Plus, there would be a lot of effort in removing the small components and trying to determine whether how much of what has a yellowish shine is really gold. It can be a terrible investment to buy these items. Unless you have hundreds of thousands of dollars to burn.
Hint buy Chinese made tourbillon watches today and see it appreciate 50x in 20 years, 500 x in 50 years
Wow... sooo much gold left on it... so, buying $7000 gold watch is mostly spent on EGO..... I'd better start buying gold watches now.....no more bullion!
I'm not into watches - in fact I stopped wearing one ever since I had a mobile phone like 20 years ago because the phone shows the time, but nonetheless, anything that makes money will be interesting to me and like you, my investment time frame is 20-30 years, so I did some googling and found out there are 2 Chinese companies selling tourbillion watches at a premium, Beijing and Sea Gull watch. Prices range from like $1000 to $4000 for stainless steel tourbillon watches. On the other hand, the cheapest Swiss tourbillion is like $15k from Tag Hueur. There are also cheaper alternatives in the range of couple hundred dollars range. The premium Chinese tourbillion watches are not cheap, much more expensive than silver collector coins so the investment is quite substantial. Tourbillon watches are supposedly expensive because they are suppose to be difficult to hand made and therefore exclusive. If the Chinese are able to mass produce these watches and sell them like $300-$500, it will undoubtedly depress the prices of such watches in the long run, except for probably the very expensive tourbillion sold by likes of Patek philipp where the brand itself is worth a lot of money. What is there to stop manufacturers from flooding the market? It's like Panda coins, they used to be exclusive until they started minting tens of millions a year. The Pandas are still very popular but the upside is already capped by the somewhat unlimited supply.
This a bit old SG but if you have a read and then compare current pricing it may answer a couple of you questions. Personally i like watches ad prefer older gold and silver ones for collecting (working or not). I have a Tag i wear for going out but only wear it when i need to look a part as i too have a cellphone that is my preferred time piece. https://www.ablogtowatch.com/aatos-tiago-review-is-this-the-cheapest-tourbillon-watch-in-the-world/
They are just going to be pumped out more and more efficiently, I doubt these will increase in value. The watch value proposition is mostly sentimental and with "prestige". I dont think Seagull will ever get there.
This interests me so I’ve been doing some research. The Chinese Tourbillon is not new, Seagull has been selling it since like 2006 so it’s more than 10 years and interestingly, the price used to higher 10 years ago. If you bought gold or silver in 2006, it would be worth more today, not to mention a preowned watch would sell for 30-40% less than brand new. For collector coins such as the Lunar I coins, the appreciation would even be higher. There might be an upside if we can keep it for 30 or 40 years but in this case, I rather buy a limited resource such as gold or silver than an unlimited manufactured product such as a watch. But what do I know? Perhaps the skill to make a Tourbillon by hand will be lost in 30 years or they could be made by robots in another 10 years? I just read an article that while auto sales in China have fallen, smart cars (not just electric), cars that come with a iPad like dashboard are in huge demand. This would mean demand for electronics is going to be sustained even in a downturn.
