Time flies and waits for no one, and once lost, is never found. Yet still, we try to keep time and measure it. The Swiss refined the art, crafting the world’s most intricate and expensive timepieces — mechanical wonders running not on batteries but on springs and gears. In the Vallée de Joux, an hour north of Geneva, watchmaking has been a winterside industry since the 17th century, when farmers added clockwork to their incomes. Big names and solo master craftsmen came of age there; Philippe Dufour is one of them.
Dufour’s one-room workshop follows old watchmaking methods and tempo. He said his first watch took “more than two years.” Today he spends about 2,000 hours — roughly a year — making a single watch by hand. The Simplicity he launched in 2000 contains 153 individual components; Dufour hand-finishes every part, and his signature broad stripes are visible throughout. His pieces sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars and sometimes fetch millions at auction — one reached $7 million — recognition more than personal profit, he said.
At Jaeger‑LeCoultre, the work is segmented: each employee performs one of roughly 180 watchmaking crafts, from adjusting springs to painting miniature masterpieces on the case back. The brand is known for innovations like the Reverso (originally developed for polo players) and for complications such as the minute repeater — a small mechanical chime that sounds the time — and the perpetual calendar, which mechanically tracks date, month and leap years (accurate until 2100). These complications are entirely mechanical, no electronics; they’re tiny, lateral “computers” made of gears, springs and wheels.
Swiss watchmaking suffered a near-collapse in the 1970s and ’80s during the quartz crisis, when cheap, accurate quartz watches from Japan undercut the market. The Swiss response was twofold: produce cheap, trendy quartz Swatch watches for the mass market and double down on the high‑end mechanical sector. That strategy paired high prices with deliberately limited supply, turning top-tier mechanical watches into status symbols and collector’s assets.
A few numbers help explain the economics. Rolex, the largest Swiss brand, makes over a million watches a year and is one of the biggest global players. Overall, Swiss watches account for fewer than 2% of units sold worldwide but more than 50% of the industry’s value because of the premium given to high‑end mechanical pieces.
At the extreme, brands like Richard Mille produce watches that can cost millions; a $2 million Richard Mille is more like a Ferrari for the wrist. Patek Philippe list prices can be in the hundreds of thousands (a split‑seconds chronograph shown in one boutique carried a price north of $300,000). But buyers can’t always just walk in and buy: limited supply and brand practices mean wait lists that can take years, sometimes a decade, to clear. Part of that is brand strategy — scarcity reinforces desirability — and part reflects deliberate small production runs to maintain craft standards.
The business side can be volatile. Earlier this year the U.S. imposed tariffs on Swiss watches at a punitive 39%, raising prices; after industry executives lobbied, the rate was lowered to 15%. Tariffs can shift quickly; the careful, slow craft of watchmaking cannot.
Small independent brands and master watchmakers underscore the artisanal basis of value. Max Büsser of MB&F makes roughly 400 watches a year and has no desire to scale: he interviews clients before selling, because each piece is a work of art. He resents when buyers treat watches primarily as investments; for him, emotional and artistic reasons should drive purchases, even if some customers later profit at auction. MB&F’s pieces are highly detailed — hundreds of components and tiny screws — and are made with the same finishing standards as traditional haute horlogerie.
Back in the Vallée de Joux, Philippe Dufour has taken on an apprentice — his daughter, Daniella. She described the wonder of watching the heart of a handmade watch “beat for the first time” and the pull of craft that made her want to continue the tradition. For Dufour, and many like him, the pleasure of making and listening to chiming watches is part of why mechanical timepieces remain prized in an age when phones tell the time perfectly.
In short: the price of these Swiss watches reflects centuries of specialized skills, enormous amounts of hand labor, tiny production runs, complex mechanical engineering and finishing that elevates a movement into an art object — and a collector’s asset whose scarcity and provenance can drive values far above the sum of its materials.
