Watches are a status symbol when wearing certain expensive makes but beware the fakes! These are usually easy enough to spot as a good genuine mechanical watch should have an almost smooth second hand movement.

The fakes generally tick forward every second where the genuine makes click three hundred and sixty times a minute. Even so, beware the skilled salesman who may have a genuine one which no doubt he has stolen off some poor holiday maker and with a clever deft movement can switch to the fake as you are counting the money.

In Indonesia on holiday a few years ago I got the price down on a supposedly genuine three thousand dollar watch to three thousand Rupees which works out at about five dollars and still the cheeky boy felt he had made a killing.

The safe way to buy genuine is perhaps to buy one of the better makes skeleton models. These have a glass back or front which reveals all the working parts. As a rule of thumb the more parts there are to a watch the better the quality. Top of the range watches that cost many thousands of pounds can have up to one thousand and more separate parts.

Watchmaking began in earnest in the early eighteenth century but it wasn’t really until after the First World War that people began wearing wrist watches and even then it was mostly women as men thought them rather effeminate and preferred the pocket or fob watch.

The Swiss have pretty well cornered the market on the high priced watches although they have also mastered the branding and selling of tens of millions of cheap ones as well. The Cuckoo clock makers now produce exquisite masterpieces for which there seems to be no end of demand for.

Explorers are the lucky recipients of some of these watches as there is much free advertising if your make is for instance worn by the first man on the moon or become a world champion bike or car driver.

There is an area of Switzerland not too far from Lausanne on Lake Geneva where clocks and top class watches have been made for a couple of hundred years and some of the very best and most expensive have a policy to sponsor expeditions which they know are going to get much publicity.

When the watch stops working it’s time to look for some watch repair specialists and what you do not want to do is fiddle with it yourself unless you are fully trained in the art of repairing watches.

Some high end watches take craftsmen over a year to make and dismantling it yourself to get at the root of the problem is definitely not a good idea. If a watch has twelve hundred parts you just know that when you put it all back together one tiny screw or spring is going to be left on the workbench and you are going to be scratching your head. watch service near me