
The mechanical watch is one of humanity's most important cultural innovations. For centuries, watches have been keeping track of time. Today, there is a myriad of environmentally-friendly mechanical watches running precisely without a battery.
Watch lovers and collectors have been enthusiastically celebrating mechanical watches for decades. Wristwatches from Rolex or Patek Philippe are considered some of the most coveted luxury watches there are, and for good reason. Both manufacturers produce mechanical timepieces that are valuable and maintain their worth. Some vintage models and limited editions even increase in value over the years.
However, there was a time when mechanical watches had a difficult time surviving. With the rise of inexpensive quartz watches in the 1970s, many watch manufacturers found themselves in extreme hardship. Some brands were forced to quit and have since disappeared; today, they are only known by watch experts. Before the quartz boom, mechanical wristwatches and pocket watches were everyday items. If you wanted to know the current time, you needed a watch, and at that time, most had a mechanical movement. However, since quartz watches were less expensive than their mechanical siblings in the mid-1970s, quartz timepieces almost completely wiped mechanical ones off the map.
Mechanical watches experienced a comeback in the beginning of the 1980s, however. Watch lovers and collectors rediscovered the charm of a ticking mechanical movement, and felt able to accept deviations of seco