The Fourth Wheel, Issue 79

Watchmaking's problem with big data, or why vintage dealers are more like priests than scholars

Hello and welcome back to The Fourth Wheel, the weekly watch newsletter that wishes its American readers a very happy Thanksgiving for yesterday! Know this, though: if you’re the guy¹ who put Rolexes on an uncooked turkey, I have judged you. Please - and this goes out to all of you, UK, US and around the world - this festive holiday period, follow this Fourth Wheel rule for life: do not put your watches in your food. Ever. It’s not good for your food, it’s not good for your watch, and it’s not good for you.

Before I forget (see Fourth Wheels gone by), next week’s newsletter, Issue 80, will see the return of our Ask Me Anything column. For newcomers, it does what it says on the tin: I want you to quiz me with your most burning horological questions. They can be as specific, far-fetched or straightforward as you like. There is a thread to which you can add your questions (and see some previous examples) or you can message me on Instagram, or simply reply to this email. Paid subscribers can read the full Fourth Wheel archive and see past AMAs here, here and here to give just a few examples.

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The Fourth Wheel is a reader-supported publication with no advertising, sponsorship or commercial partnerships to influence its content. It is made possible by the generous support of its readers: if you think watch journalism could do with a voice that exists outside of the usual media dynamic, please consider taking out a paid subscription. You can start with a free trial!

Here’s a little taste of what you might have missed recently:

The Only Watch Saga, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4
A Brief History Of Lightweight Watchmaking
Hands-on review: The Patek Philippe 6007G
The Twelve Most Significant Watches In The World
A Zoom Call With Jean-Claude Biver, and Ten Ways To Improve The GPHG

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A minor kerfuffle this week over the official launch, in Dubai, of EveryWatch, the latest platform aimed at making watches act like financial instruments. The teacup-based-tempest centred around an article published on Hodinkee - a bit of a puff piece, sure, but that’s not the issue at stake. It appears that EveryWatch, or someone acting on its behalf, had created upwards of a dozen new user accounts purely to comment on this one story, all expressing their interest in or enthusiasm for EveryWatch in ways that seemed genuine, but on closer examination shared a certain bland syntax and artful variation. You know how if you ask people to pick a random sequence of numbers, they naturally end up spacing them out a bit too evenly? That. Every one of these commenters found a slightly different aspect of EveryWatch to praise, with identical levels of measured warmth. It could all be a coincidence, but if you really think so, I suggest you need new batteries in your bullshit-o-meter².

This isn’t really the topic I came here to discuss, however but it is what gets us to the more general topic of watchmaking’s problem with data.

I don’t know if, or why, the watch world is particularly susceptible to false prophets from the land of Big Tech, but it is embarrassing how frequently Switzerland’s biggest players are seduced by the latest fads. Maybe the tech bros and the traders see an industry built on wheels and springs and assume that everyone involved on a business level is similarly out-of-step with modern life; what seems even more baffling is how watch businesses, many of which are not run by dunces at all, persist in living down to these low expectations.

As one, they fell for NFTs. As one, they jumped onboard the crypto wagon. If I’ve heard one brand executive waffle through a badly-written speech about the transformative potential of blockchain, I’ve heard a dozen. Establish a presence in the metaverse? Can’t wait! This year, it has been the coming of AI, a phrase whose meaning has been so criminally hollowed-out in recent times; and yet luxury brands, with goldfish-like levels of recall, have swooned before artificial intelligence just as they swooned at every other buzzword and acronym before it. Naturally, EveryWatch touts its AI capabilities - abilities shamelessly trumpeted by the likes of WorldTempus without once caring to explain what they consist of. When you really read the blurb, it boils down to ‘an algorithm that tracks prices of different watches’, which is basically just counting. Artificial intelligence? I wouldn’t trust it to boil a kettle.