Cost of ownership calculator

The three numbers that actually matter

Purchase price is the one people negotiate. Service cost is the one they forget: a full overhaul of a common automatic typically runs somewhere around $250 to $500 at an independent watchmaker, and $700 to $1,200 for a chronograph or an in-house caliber at a brand service center. Treat those as indicative US figures before sales tax: bench rates differ from one workshop to the next, a bench outside the US quotes in its own currency, and all of them move. Resale is the one they fantasize about, and it is an assumption rather than a fact.

The currency buttons only change the symbol. The tool does no conversion and no inflation adjustment, so every figure it returns is in today's money in whatever currency you typed. Our page on the cost of owning a mechanical watch sets out the same figures at length, and service costs breaks the bench work down by job.

A worked example, line by line

Take the values the tool opens with: $2,500 paid, ten years of ownership, a seven year service interval, $500 a service and an assumed 50 percent resale.

Forty-eight cents a day is the number worth carrying around, because it is the one that survives contact with an actual decision. It is less than a cup of coffee a week for a watch most people would call an extravagance, and it is roughly seven times what the same arithmetic returns for a $300 watch. Whether that is good value is not something arithmetic can answer, but it does move the argument off the sticker price, which is where it belongs.

How the service count works

The tool counts services as the whole number of intervals that fit into your ownership minus one year: ten years at a seven year interval is one service, not two, because it assumes you do not pay for an overhaul in the year you sell. That assumption produces steps rather than a smooth line. Seven years of ownership counts zero services; eight years counts one; fourteen counts one; fifteen counts two. If your answer sits just below one of those thresholds, add a year and look again, because the jump is real money.

The interval itself is your choice, not the manufacturer's. Published intervals run from roughly three to ten years depending on the maker, and many owners run to symptoms instead: a shortened power reserve, a rate that has drifted well outside normal, or moisture in the case. Our answer on service intervals covers the argument on both sides. Enter the interval you will actually use, not the one in the booklet.

Being honest about resale

Most watches lose a large share of retail the moment they leave the store, and the loss is steepest on brands with wide discounting. A small number of steel sports references from a few brands have historically traded at or above retail, and that has never been a promise, only a market condition that can and does reverse. Enter a number you would actually accept in a private sale today, not the highest asking price you have seen on a listing site.

Two details change the figure more than people expect. The percentage is applied to what you paid, not to list price, so buying well is rewarded automatically: pay $7,000 for a watch listed at $10,000 and a $7,500 sale is 107 percent, not 75. And selling has costs. A dealer buys at a discount to what they can sell for, consignment takes a commission, and a private sale takes your time and carries the risk. Our guide to selling a watch and the page on depreciation by brand are the places to calibrate the number before you type it.

Two watches, compared

The clearest use of the tool is running it twice. Here is an inexpensive automatic kept for fifteen years against a mid-priced Swiss watch kept for thirty, both with plausible service and resale assumptions.

The expensive watch costs four times as much a year. The interesting number is elsewhere: servicing is $600 of the cheap watch's $844, about 71 percent of everything it will ever cost, against 40 percent for the Swiss watch. Two overhauls cost nearly twice what the cheap watch cost to buy, which is why many owners of inexpensive automatics replace rather than service them, and why a $60 to $150 regulation is often the right amount of money to spend on one instead.

What this leaves out

Straps, a pressure test every year or two at roughly $25 to $60, insuring the watch as a specified item at roughly 1 to 2 percent of insured value annually, shipping both ways for service, and the cost of the months a watch spends away. None of it is large individually. All of it is real, and it is the reason the cheapest way to own watches is to own fewer of them and wear them. Our pages on strap costs and on insuring a watch cover those lines.

Inflation is left out too. At 3 percent a year, a service that costs $500 today is about $760 in the dollars of the year you actually pay it, fourteen years out. The tool works in today's money throughout, which keeps the comparison between two watches honest while understating the cash that will leave your account.

Three situations sit outside the model entirely. A quartz watch has no overhaul line: set the service cost to zero and remember batteries at $15 to $60, or $40 to $80 with a new gasket and a pressure test. A vintage watch can need parts that no longer exist, which makes a service quote unpredictable and sometimes larger than the watch is worth. And a watch nobody searches for has no liquidity at any price, so entering a resale of zero is not pessimism, it is accuracy. This calculator runs entirely in your browser and keeps nothing you type; it exists to make a purchase decision clearer, not to talk you into or out of one.