One of the interesting side effects of going at the industry bottom-up is you develop new perspectives. One of which is that the "watch-o-sphere" is utterly and completely full of shit. Literally everything you see on aBlogToWatch or Monochrome is unsubstantiated garbage, opinion represented as fact, speculation parading as gospel truth. The first inkling of this was when the whole of Instagram torch'n'pitchforked the CODE

Without paying the barest lipservice to the fact that the consumer press had done the exact same thing to the Royal Oak and the Nautilus.

I have four years' worth of Wristwatch Annuals ingested. Now granted - the latest I've got is 2006. But I've got the movement of every single wristwatch every single company of note wanted to advertise and the ETA 2892 is far more popular than the 2824, and the Valjoux 7750/7751/7753/7754 is more popular than the 2892.

Bell & Ross, that storied brand for adventurers that are made by Sinn and have heritage dating all the way back to 1997, charged an extra $1400 for a synthetic sapphire crystal in 2004, 2005 and 2006. Fuckers were selling a $2200 watch with a plastic crystal or for $3400 you could buy the same damn watch only it came with a $22 corundum crystal.

And that's $22 to me. RETAIL.

An 11 3/4''' Seagull is $20 at retail. An 11 1/2''' Miyota is $54 at retail. An 11 1/2''' ETA 2824 is $239 at retail. $200 upsell on the ETA is basically a pass-through cost. They're not making a dime on it.