The cost of owning a mechanical watch

A watch is not its purchase price. It is the purchase, plus every service, plus the small recurring costs, minus whatever it is worth when you are finished with it, spread across the years you wore it. Run that calculation once and it changes how you shop.

Everything below is in US dollars and indicative for 2026, and US prices are quoted before sales tax, which varies by state. Service rates track local wages, list prices outside the United States move with import duty and local tax, and resale moves with the market, so treat the arithmetic as a method rather than a quotation. You can substitute your own figures in the cost of ownership calculator.

The five numbers in the arithmetic

1. Purchase price, including whatever sales tax you paid. This is the only number most people think about.
2. Servicing, at roughly one overhaul every seven to ten years for a watch in regular use.
3. Insurance, which is zero for most inexpensive watches and a real annual line above roughly a thousand dollars.
4. Consumables: straps, spring bars, a bracelet sizing, a pressure test every year or two if you swim with it.
5. Resale, subtracted at the end. This is an assumption, not a fact, and it dominates the result.

What servicing adds over ten years

A full service on a simple automatic runs roughly $250 to $500 at an independent watchmaker and $350 to $1,200 at a brand service center, the top of that band belonging to the brands that charge the most for their own bench work. Chronographs and in-house calibers cost more. Our service price guide breaks the ranges down by movement type.

Across ten years, most owners face one overhaul, and some face two if the watch is worn daily and the manufacturer interval is short. Manufacturer guidance commonly sits somewhere in the five to ten year band, and the honest answer on intervals is that behavior matters more than the calendar. For planning, one service in ten years is a reasonable base case and two is the pessimistic one.

The critical structural point: servicing is priced by bench hours, not by the value of the watch. The same three-hand caliber costs roughly the same to overhaul in a $350 case and a $3,500 one. That single fact is why running costs eat a much larger share of a cheap watch than an expensive one.

Insurance, straps and the small recurring costs

Below roughly $1,000, most household contents policies cover a watch without a separate premium, subject to a single-item limit and to whether cover extends away from home. Above that, insurers generally want the watch listed as a specified item, and the premium is commonly on the order of 1 to 2 percent of the insured value a year. Our answer on whether to insure a watch covers what to check in the policy wording.

Straps are the cheapest line and the one you control. A fabric strap, one good leather or rubber strap and a spring bar tool cover a decade for $60 to $200, as set out in our strap and bracelet price guide. A manufacturer bracelet is a different order of magnitude entirely.

Add a pressure test at $25 to $60 every year or two if the watch goes in water, and a bracelet sizing at anything from free to about $40 if it was not included with the purchase.

Example one: a $350 Japanese automatic

A Seiko 5 Sports or a similar Japanese automatic, worn several days a week for ten years, occasionally swum with.

• Purchase: $350
• Servicing: a replacement movement fitted at around year eight rather than an overhaul, roughly $150. An overhaul would cost more than the watch is worth used.
• Straps and tool: $100
• Pressure test, once: $50
• Insurance: covered by household contents, no marginal premium
• Resale after ten years: roughly $80 to $120, call it $100

Net cost over ten years: about $550, or roughly $55 a year. Note that the running costs came to $300, which is 86 percent of what the watch cost to buy.

Example two: a $900 Swiss automatic

A Powermatic 80 or Sellita-based Swiss watch on a steel bracelet, worn most days.

• Purchase: $900
• Servicing: one full overhaul at an independent watchmaker around year eight, roughly $350
• Straps: $120
• Pressure tests: $80
• Insurance: at the boundary. Zero if your contents cover accepts it, up to about $150 across ten years as a specified item
• Resale after ten years: roughly $250 to $360, call it $300

Net cost over ten years: about $1,150, or roughly $115 a year. Running costs of $550 are 61 percent of the purchase price, a lower proportion than the cheaper watch despite being more than twice the money.

Example three: a $6000 steel sports watch

A Swiss steel diver in the class of the Seamaster 300M, bought new from an authorized dealer and worn daily.

• Purchase: $6,000
• Servicing: one brand overhaul around year seven, roughly $900
• Straps, including one manufacturer rubber strap: $250
• Insurance as a specified item, roughly $70 a year: $700
• Pressure test outside the service: $50
• Resale after ten years: roughly $3,000 to $3,800, call it $3,300

Net cost over ten years: about $4,600, or roughly $460 a year. Running costs of $1,900 are 32 percent of the purchase price, the lowest proportion of the three, while the absolute cost is more than eight times the first example.

What the three examples show

Three conclusions follow, and none of them is the one people expect.

First, the expensive watch is proportionally cheaper to run and absolutely far more expensive to own. Anyone who tells you a luxury watch is "cheaper in the long run" is quoting the ratio and hiding the total.

Second, resale is the dominant term. Change the third example's resale assumption from $3,300 to $2,400 and the annual cost rises from $460 to $550 without anything else changing. That is why our depreciation by brand page uses ranges and why you should be pessimistic here.

Third, the cheap watch is not free. Close to half of a $350 watch's ten-year outlay is maintenance and consumables, and if you insist on a full overhaul rather than a movement swap the share is higher still.

Buying across a border: duty, tax and warranty

A cross-border purchase can look cheaper and often is not, because three costs land after the order.

Import duty on wrist-watches entering the United States is set by the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, which prices a watch by case material, movement type and jewel count rather than by one flat percentage, and the amount is usually small next to the watch itself. Your own state then charges sales or use tax on the purchase. Couriers add a customs brokerage fee, typically $10 to $30. Importing into most other countries costs more, because a value added tax or goods and services tax is charged on the total of goods, shipping and duty at the destination rate, and that tax is normally the largest of the three. Rates and thresholds differ by country and change, so check your own tax authority rather than a page like this one.

The fourth cost is not financial until something goes wrong. A watch bought outside a brand's authorized network may have no valid manufacturer warranty in your country, which turns a warranty repair into a paid one. Our answer on gray market watches covers what you are actually giving up.

How to run your own numbers

Four inputs, and you can find all of them in an evening. Take the real purchase price including tax. Take the service cost from a quote by a local watchmaker, not from a page. Take resale from completed sales of your exact reference in your own market, then reduce it. And decide honestly how many years you will keep it, because the same watch kept for twenty years costs half as much per year as one kept for ten.

Put those into the cost of ownership calculator and compare two candidates side by side. If this is your first watch, read the first watch guide and our answer on how much to spend first, and if the total makes you uncomfortable, the cheapest lever available is buying pre-owned, which removes the largest single loss from the calculation before you have paid anything. The depreciation guide explains why that loss exists at all, and the servicing guide covers how to keep the maintenance line as small as it honestly can be.