Two Saxon dress watches from the same few square miles of Germany. One is machine-finished and costs about the same as a weekend away. The other is finished entirely by hand and costs fifteen times more. So what is the hand actually worth?
Matched on
The Saxon, time-only dress watch on a plain dial, from the same corner of Germany. One finished by machine, one finished entirely by hand.
Nomos Glashütte
From about USD 2,300, in steel
The Bauhaus icon of modern German watchmaking, and the accessible way into a real Glashütte movement. In-house since 2005, with Nomos's own escapement since 2014, an honest three-quarter-plate caliber decorated cleanly by machine. In steel, for the price of a weekend away. You are buying genuine German watchmaking at the point where value is the whole argument.
Lang & Heyne, Radeberg
From about USD 29,800, in gold
A hundred or so watches a year from a Saxon workshop near Dresden, finished entirely by hand: the engraved balance cock, the German-silver plates, the screwed gold chatons, the black polishing done the slow way. In precious metal, at roughly fifteen times the Nomos. You are buying the hand itself, and the rarity that comes with it.
The verdict
Last week the independent came in at half the price of the mainstream. This week it is fifteen times more. Nomos is the value benchmark, machine-finished, in-house, and honest about it. Lang & Heyne is the hand-made object, a few hundred a year, decorated the slow way in gold. The neat detail: Mirko Heyne left Lang & Heyne in 2002 to run development at Nomos, so the two are closer than the price gap suggests. One buys you the value. The other buys you the hand. What the hand is worth is the only question left.
The TGC view
The independent index is not always the cheaper pick. Sometimes it is the far dearer one, and the point is to know exactly what the money buys: hand-finishing, precious metal, and an output measured in dozens. We handle the introduction, the allocation and the workshop visit either way.
An IWC pilot's watch against a Bavarian house that makes its own steel and its own movements. The usual story is that the independent charges a premium. Here it does not, and the establishment name is the one trading under list.
Read the review →Breguet patented the tourbillon in 1801 and puts the patent date on the dial. A twenty-something Frenchman on the shore of Lake Annecy makes twelve tourbillons a year by hand, and charges less. For once the independent is not the expensive one.
Read the review →Two pure round dress watches, and a shared secret: the independent was made by a man who spent thirty-seven years inside one of the great Geneva houses before leaving to sign his own name. The house, or the hand that used to work there?
Read the review →