FOR most people, the humble quartz watch fulfils all the functions required of a timepiece.

After all, it is cheap, reliable and easy to service. But discerning collectors and investors have long preferred mechanical watches.

Such timepieces - which rely on springs to drive the regulating mechanisms, called movements - are usually harder to make and thus retain more value. As a rule, cheaper watches are mostly electronic with quartz movements that are relatively easier to make.

Expensive, collectible watches valued more for their workmanship and aesthetics often have purely mechanical movements, even though these are marginally less accurate than quartz ones.

When quartz watches first appeared in the 1970s during what is now known as the quartz revolution, the leading Swiss watch-making industry was devastated as the cheaper, more accurate competition produced mainly in Japan took the world by storm.

The Swiss industry staged a recovery because of the popular Swatch products.

But The Hour Glass executive director Michael Tay says that mechanical watches are still more valuable: 'Given the high labour inflation we are seeing in the industry, there is only one way that the price of such watches can go, and that is up.

'Electronic watches can also become obsolete when their technology is superseded by newer models and they become too expensive to repair. But mechanical watches are always serviceable and repairable as long as you can find a good craftsman.'

» Gaining value with time

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