Sofia P.K. is currently suspended 43 feet above the pavement, her knuckles white against the handle of a pneumatic chisel. She is a mason, the kind who treats a 1923 brick wall with the same reverence a surgeon treats a femoral artery. Right now, she is scraping away lime mortar that has sat undisturbed for 103 years, and she is doing it with a level of focus that makes the world around her disappear.

There is a specific rhythm to it-the bite of the steel, the puff of dust, the vibration traveling up her arm. She isn’t thinking about the resale value of the building. She isn’t thinking about the appreciation of the real estate market in East London. She is thinking about the bond between the stone and the binder. She is thinking about the time it takes for things to actually set.

The Hunger for Clarity

I am sitting in a cafe across the street, watching her through the window while my stomach makes a sound like a grinding gear train. I started a diet at 4:03pm today-don’t ask why 4:03pm, that is just when the realization hit me that I couldn’t breathe in my favorite trousers-and the hunger is making me irritable.

It’s 6:53pm now. Every person walking past with a pastry looks like a personal enemy. This irritability, however, is providing a certain clarity. It is stripping away the polite veneer I usually maintain when discussing the state of the watch world.

A few months ago, I was at one of those “watch dinners” in a room that smelled of expensive leather and desperation. I was seated next to a man whose name I’ve fortunately forgotten, but whose job title involved “quantitative analysis” for a fund that probably moves more money in 3 seconds than I will see in 13 lifetimes. He didn’t ask me what I thought about the escapement of the watch on my wrist. He didn’t ask about the history of the brand or why the dial had turned that specific shade of tropical brown.

“Which references in the 1543 range have outperformed the S&P in the last decade?”

– The Analyst, smelling of a $333 bottle of cologne

I answered him politely. I think I said something about how the market is volatile and how I prefer to look at the finishing on the bridges. He looked at me like I was a simpleton who had wandered into a high-stakes poker game thinking it was a bridge club. He checked his phone, probably looking at a spreadsheet of 5713 prices, and didn’t speak to me for the rest of the night.

I left early. I went home and looked at my collection-a modest group of pieces I’ve hunted for over 13 years-and I felt a sudden, sharp wave of revulsion. Two weeks later, I sold two of them. Neither went to a person like him, thank god. But the incident stayed with me because it highlighted a rot that is eating the center out of everything we used to call a hobby.

We see it in cars, we see it in whiskey, we see it in art, and right now, we are seeing it in horology with a terrifying intensity. It is the financialization of the soul. We are watching a category that was built on craftsmanship, micro-engineering, and a bizarre, beautiful obsession with mechanical permanence fill up with speculators.

These are people who cannot tell a chronograph from a double-sealed calendar, who treat reference numbers as ticker symbols, and who have pushed prices to a point where the people who actually love the objects can no longer afford to touch them.

The Industry’s Cultural Displacement

The industry experts often point to these skyrocketing prices as a sign of “category strength.” They talk about the “investment grade” nature of certain brands as if it’s a triumph of engineering. It isn’t. It is a symptom of cultural displacement.

When the primary value of an object becomes its liquidity-the ease with which it can be turned back into cash-it stops being an object of beauty and starts being a battery for capital. And batteries are meant to be used, drained, and swapped. They aren’t meant to be loved.

Sofia P.K. knows this, even if she doesn’t wear a watch. She understands that if you use a mortar that is too hard for the stone, the stone eventually cracks. The mortar should be the sacrificial element; it should give so the stone can live. In the watch world, the “investors” are the hard mortar. They are rigid, unyielding, and focused only on the structural integrity of their portfolios. They are cracking the stones of the community.

I once bought a watch because I thought it was a “smart move.” It was a 2013 GMT that everyone said was going to double in value. I hated it. Every time I looked at it, I didn’t see the cleverness of the jumping hour hand or the way the light caught the ceramic bezel. I saw a fluctuating number.

I was checking the forums every 3 hours to see if the market had moved. I wasn’t a collector; I was a day trader with a very small, very inconvenient terminal strapped to my arm. I eventually sold it and bought something “technically inferior” that made my heart skip a beat every time I wound it. That was a mistake, financially speaking. It was the best decision I’ve made in 23 years.

The Feedback Loop of Boredom

The problem with the current trajectory is that it creates a feedback loop of boredom. When brands realize that their primary customers are no longer enthusiasts but speculators, they start designing for the speculators. They prioritize the “recognizable” over the “remarkable.”

They produce 43 variations of the same steel sports watch because that is what the liquidity-seekers want. They stop taking risks. Why innovate a new movement when you can just change the dial color to “Tiffany Blue” and watch the secondary market explode by 333 percent?

A category that delivers exactly what the numbers want eventually loses everything that made the numbers go up in the first place. You cannot have a market without a foundation of genuine passion. If you remove the people who love the history, the grit, and the mechanical poetry, you are left with a giant game of musical chairs played with $53,000 Swiss trinkets.

When the music stops-and in the world of finance, the music always stops-the speculators will vanish. They will move on to the next “undervalued” asset class. They’ll go buy up vintage postage stamps or rare species of cacti. But they will leave behind a scorched earth. They will leave behind an industry that has forgotten how to speak to the person who just wants a beautiful machine to mark the passage of their own life.

We need to decide what we want this world to look like in 13 or 23 years. If we continue to celebrate the “investment” side of horology, we are essentially cheering for our own obsolescence. We are inviting the barbarians not just to the gate, but to the dinner table.

The Weight of Things

I’m watching Sofia now as she finishes her section. She packs her tools into a worn leather bag. She has 3 specific chisels, each one used for a different depth of work. She doesn’t look at the building and see a “flip.” She looks at it and sees a structure that will now stand for another 103 years because she did the work correctly. She understands the “why” of the thing.

I am so hungry I could eat the lime mortar she just scraped off. But as I stand up to leave, I look at my own watch. It’s a bit scratched. The crystal has a tiny nick at the 3 o’clock position from the time I hit it against a doorframe while carrying my daughter. It is worth significantly less than I paid for it.

The watch industry is currently obsessed with its own price tag, and it’s a boring conversation. It’s a conversation held by people who have never felt the weight of a historic building mason’s tool or spent 3 hours trying to regulate a movement in a cold basement. It’s a conversation for people who want to own things but don’t want to be burdened by the act of loving them.

I think back to that analyst at the dinner. He had a 5711 on his wrist that was probably worth more than the car I drive. He kept it under his cuff, protecting the “asset.” He didn’t even look at it when he wanted to know the time; he looked at his phone. The watch was a ghost. It was a phantom digit in his net worth.

I want to live in a world where things have weight. Where a watch is a tool for living, not a vehicle for wealth preservation. I want to see more people like Sofia P.K. in the world-people who understand that the most valuable things we have are the ones that require our attention, our maintenance, and our genuine, un-monetized affection.

If we lose that, we aren’t collectors anymore. We’re just accountants with better jewelry. And frankly, the world has enough accountants. What it needs is more people who are willing to get their hands dusty, who are willing to buy the “wrong” watch for the right reasons, and who are willing to hold onto something for 53 years just because they like the way the light hits the dial at 6:43pm.

As I walk out of the cafe, the wind hits me, and for a second, I forget about the diet. I forget about the hunger. I just feel the tick of the balance wheel against my wrist-a tiny, mechanical heartbeat that doesn’t care about the S&P 500. It just cares about the next second. And the one after that. And the one after that.

Is it possible to love something that is also a commodity, or does the very act of pricing it destroy the magic? That is the question the industry refuses to answer, because the answer might cost them a lot of money. But for those of us still standing on the scaffolding, trying to preserve the stone, the answer is already written in the dust.