u/Middle_Dragonfly6746

I am looking to buy a watch below $800. While I know traditionally this is not the price range in which you can expect to get a forever watch, but still those lots of vintage Seiko 5s and Citizen 7s being serviced and resold give me hope.

So my question is, with how unservicable certain modern Swiss movements can be like the H-10 on Hamiltons, the Powermatic 80 on Tissots since they need specialised equipment (for example to just align/calibrate the free sprung balance with laser) and can't be done by a local watchmaker unless they have the equipment and training from Swatch Group(which itself just swaps the movement instead of repairing it if you send it to them).

My current thinking is this: Seiko and Miyota movements especially in the <$800 range are still more sensible than Swiss equivalents that will need at least $260 for the labour alone and then parts which could be as much as $2500 total as of 2026. While for ~$250 alone you can easily swap nearly any Seiko or Miyota movement, the service in the 3rd world is even cheaper if its just oils drying out.

So in my mind it’s a matter of servicing something as a constant object (Swiss) or maintaining a ship of Theseus (Japanese). The advantage with the ship of Theseus approach is you can just get a new platform when patching up the old base becomes untenable, but if the base on the Swiss doesn’t have parts/service available from the brand itself then you are stuck with writing off that upfront cost entirely. So in aggregate, the costs on Swiss brands is just not justified.

However given certain watches like the Seiko SKX series and SNK series are easy to do movement upgrades on from their 7S26 movements to NH36/35 while for others you are shit out of luck, does my thesis hold?

And no a side tangent on affordable watches in some threads are not a balanced playing field. We need more affordable watch hot takes.

...take it off.

In the quest for the perfect GADA, the problem is not the watch, the problem is you. The problem is how you choose watches, if you make compromises for specs and suitability for social convention then you will nitpick and find reasons to switch watches. If you truly want to embrace the minimalist one watch collection life, learn to let go and be extremely discerning about what you buy/hold onto. Remember it's not the WR specs or the aesthetic, it is how much you love something. Hate to use pulpy lit. reference here but that cliched scene in Angles and Demons Dan Brown wrote where his protaganist Robert Langdon dresses formally like a classic humanities professor but wears a silly children's Micky mouse watch because it keeps him young at heart, that's the GADA mindset.