Somnolence Who is actually buying a fancy watch for the artistry of the item itself? $40,000 so you can admire the piece and tell the time? No, it's just dudebros buying "an investment".
I'll give a few examples and then shut up about watches because I deal with them as part of my job, I'm interested in them, I can talk about it for days but it's not something that's interesting at all for outsiders. However, examples can give a good insight into exactly WHAT happens when the financebros really embed themselves into a hobby.
For a long time, the general wisdom was that only a few type of watches could gain value :
-precious metal pieces if you wait long enough for the weight in gold or platinum to be worth more than the initial markup
-pieces with a demonstrable history, like ship clocks or military wristwatches
-very rare pieces, which at the time meant things produced in fewer than 100 copies
And that was it. That means if you wanted to use these as investments, you needed to either wait a long time OR have some very good contacts to score some interesting pieces with a backstory.
Then, certain models got disproportionately popular for a variety of reason (Omega Speedmaster because of some excellent marketing around its history with space flight ; Rolex Daytona due to a "demonstrable history" piece breaking auction records, look up the Paul Newman "Drive Carefully" auction ; the Audemars Piguet RoyalOak because its industrial, geometric design was going back into vogue ; the Patek Philippe Nautilus for the same reason as it was made by the same designer) so much so that demand ended up far outweighing supplies, resulting in 10+ years waiting lists for certain models. That was the birth of the "hype watches".
Because demand was so much higher than supply, if you had one of these models you could easily sell it for several times its initial value. That meant these became ridiculously good investments : you can easily make twice your money and with essentially no effort.
Add Covid to the mix and everyone having time ad money at hand and you have a massive influx of "investhusiasts" in a space that was already full of them. You started having waiting lists for models that weren't even that hard to get a few years prior just because "if we hawk the supplies then they won't be available at retail and we can flip for a profit". The brands themselves absolutely played into that, moving into a model of limited editions one after the other in addition to production models being "harder to get" because of the demand.
And this has driven a wedge into the collecting hobby in a way that is hard to describe.
So going back to your statement :
Does someone who really cares buy a 40k wristwatch? Or is it just scalpers, investors and the like?
Well the hobby is completely split.
For instance :
This is the Panomatic Lunar by Glashütte Original
The caliber is decorated and engraved by hand. A lot of elements have to be re-adjusted individually for each caliber away from the initial production tolerances. The entire caliber has a very unique architecture too that is only found on one family of watches made only by that brand because nobody else uses an oscillating weight in this position for the automatic winding. It is regulated for accuracy in nine steps, four of which are redundant and only done to make extra sure you are within german chronometric standards. They are a pretty low-volume production too as the brand only has one factory and a limited output.
In steel, it costs about 12 000€ brand new. By all means no small sum.
However, on the secondary market it can be found for 5000€ to 7000€.
Because this is just not a "hype watch".
Unless you really care about the craftsmanship and the engineering involved, or really have a taste for german maximalism, then you won't care.
Hence the price dropping second hand.
That's not a bad thing in itself, you can get an incredible deal.
BUT
Since the collecting hobby has been so thoroughly hijacked by investors, this watch has a terrible reputation because it doesn't hold value, it has not perceived presence, it is not recognizable.
That can lead to some just surreal forum discussions where showing this to other "enthusiasts" can result in being asked if you have this four to five figure, hand-adjusted, partly handcrafted, rare watch because you couldn't afford a Speedmaster (9000€ new, 6-9000€ secondary for standard models, 10000+ for certain limited models) or a Daytona (15000€new, 20000€ secondary) both of which are industrially built watches made mostly by machine operators. The monetary and investment value completely warps the perception of quality and enjoyment.
So...
Do people who like this whole collecting hobby buy these very expensive pieces?
Yes.
And they're now the suckers of the collecting world because they won't see any return on their investment, which was never the point.
Consider this a cautionary tale and an example of why you should do everything you can to prevent the hobbies you like to be "asset-ified".
Because if it gets bad enough, the entire discourse will be twisted into nothing but value and investment.
The upside is that it makes some "less valuable and therefore less desirable" stuff way more affordable than it should.
The downside is that the big ticket items become completely impossible to obtain because the value is so inflated.
It's wonderful if you like the Panomatic because you're a nerd who cares about unique engineering.
It's horrible if you like the Daytona because you're into motorsports.
Alright I'll shut up about watches now, unless someone asks for more.
