Musings On The Panerai Radiomir

[WillFly]

A member of another watch forum has a Panerai Radiomir for sale. Apparently the RRP of this watch is £3,250 and he wants around £1,000 less than this for the watch.

 

It's a nice looking watch - I have no interest in Panerai and know very little about them - but something struck a chord about the movement, so I checked it out. Sure enough, it's an ETA 6497-2, a fairly standard, good quality, Swiss (ex-pocket watch) movement. Now, I bought my Hamilton Khaki Mechanical Field Officer's Watch, second-hand, for £200. It's a very nice watch - and the movement inside it is... an ETA 6497-2, identical to that in the Panerai.

 

Panerai actually call it calibre "OP II - base movement ETA 6497-2", but I can't see much difference in the Panerai and the Hamilton, and the Chinese 6497-2 I bought for my "Hong Kong Custom" cost me about £40!

 

So - is the price difference between Panerai and Hamilton all in the design, the case, the strap - the name? Or just one more example of where a name in the watch world bumps up the price?

Edited November 7, 2014 by WillFly

[ro63rto]

They apparently get the movements in and tweak them in some way.

The rest of the cost goes into what you mentioned above.

Me, I will be getting either a Getat or Manbushijie Homage version. About £100 :-)

[autowind]

There is a great deal of hype concerning watches with prices ranging from almost £500,000 for a Patek Phillipe minute repeater with tourbillon, yes a masterpiece but is it worth that sort of money?  I have just bought the watch pictured off the Bay for £9.96p and with free postage,  I know it's probably Chinese but what I'm interested in is value for money.  It really is up to the buyer to decide what they want to spend their money on and as long as they are happy who cares,  me , I still want value for money.

[Don]

I'd say the cost of the Panerai is mostly in the name. I'm not a fan of the looks of Panerai watches. From both an aesthetic and economic point of view, if I had that kind of money to spend on a watch, I wouldn't buy a Panerai. I'd really like a Hamilton Khaki though.

[Geo]

Unfortunately the name means everything when it comes to price.

I am currently collecting watches at an affordable prices that have quality movements found in big name watches. This lets me work on quality movements that I would otherwise have second thoughts about tackling.

[WillFly]

That really is a good route to take, Geo - good man!

[Mark]

I hate Panerai watches. 

 

They make tweaks to some movements that make it impossible for an indy watch repairer to work on them.

 

I never take them on for repair any more.

[DJW]

Panerai also had a fairly big scandal a few years back. They offered Boutique models specific to the location of the boutique, Like New York, London, etc. called the Model 318(?).

The scandal was that the model that they were selling for $5000US actually had the lowest grade ETA 6497 movement inside. No decoration, no adjustments- nothing special about it at all. I can actually buy this movement brand new for $150.  They ended up offering to replace these movements with higher grade movements "IF" anyone requested them to do so, but only did so after a huge amount of negative press. 

[Blacklab]

Its like a lot of things in life:

1. Do you want it?

2. Can you afford it?

Often those who answer yes to both questions also like the term 'reassuringly expensive', no matter how bad the item actually is.

[Geo]

They make tweaks to some movements that make it impossible for an indy watch repairer to work on them.

That's interesting, what sort of tweaks are you talking about? I didn't think there was much you wouldn't tackle.