Watches, watchmaking, and horology is such a frustrating topic. On one hand its a beautiful, thoughtful art in both design, manufacture, and repair/service.

On the other hand, its dominated by the worst bourgeois elitism. Not even rich guys who own and drive race cars are as elitist as some guy who buys 4 15k rolexes so rolex lets him buy the 20k watch he wants.

Any talk of cheaper movements is scoffed at because it loses 3 seconds/month. Like dude you have an electric winder, most people just have their watches wind down and are set again when you put them on.

One of the best examples is the Soviet Vostok watches, and their design philosophy. Soviet tools weren't as good as swiss tools, so they couldn't copy a design, so they made their own that keeps great time, needs servicing every 10 years, rather than every 3, and competes in water-tightness with industry giants by just using the pressure of water to improve water-tightness and seal rather than a convoluted positive pressure system that makes a watch even MORE expensive and impractical to own and use.

Theres a few videos of watchmakers taking them apart and reviewing them and its obvious they can't find anything really wrong with them, they just lack the unnecessary build quality of a piece that costs 100x as much. Yet 40 year old vostoks can be wound and ran with decent accuracy without fear of destroying the internals because the tolerances are slightly bigger and less damage is done by metal particulate when the works are dirty.

Edit: an anecdote. I was in vegas once getting my value out of giant alcohol slushy refills and I walked by a panerai shop. No way I could afford one but I went in to look anyway. The one guy in there asks if I want to try one on and I take off my vostok, and the dude was more interested in the vostok than the unrealistic expectation of selling me a watch on credit. Still working class in the end I guess.