Choosing Your First Luxury Watch

Browsing without a ceiling is how a $500 budget becomes a $2,000 purchase. Set the number first and treat it as fixed, because every category has an excellent option at every price.

Remember that straps, a winder, servicing and insurance are real costs. Budget roughly ten percent on top of the watch itself for the first year.

People buy the watch for the life they imagine rather than the one they have. If you work at a desk and go to two formal events a year, a 44mm dive watch is not the answer, however good it looks in photographs.

Audit a typical week. Mostly casual and outdoors: field or dive. Mostly office with occasional formality: a versatile 38 to 40mm three-hander. Frequent travel: a GMT.

Buying too large. Case sizes trended up for two decades and have come firmly back down. A watch that felt normal in a shop often feels enormous by month three.

Buying for resale. Very few watches appreciate, and the ones that do have waiting lists. Buy what you want to wear.

Buying the most complicated thing affordable. A moonphase perpetual calendar at the bottom of its price bracket is worse made than a simple three-hander at the top of the same bracket.

New from an authorised seller gives you a warranty and no authenticity questions. Grey market saves money and usually voids the manufacturer warranty. Pre-owned is the best value if you buy from a dealer who offers a return window.

Whatever the channel, take the reference number and search it before paying. Five minutes of reading prevents almost every bad purchase.