It says that men's wristwatches lost connotations of effeminacy in the late 19th C but that didn't stop Rudolph Valentino's detractors, in the late teens and early twenties of the 20th C, homing in on his wristwatch as another point of attack.

Also, ironically, mobiles and cells have become a new breed of pocket watch.

I have a service pocket watch, from WWI, insricibed on the back "GSTP", for : "General Service Time Piece" which, along with a tiny little medal of defeat; that his Austrian prisoner of War gave to him, when they became friends, after the War, my grandfather carried in his pocket until he died in 1972. I don't think that  the watch ever let him down; nor did the friendhip fade until the Austian ( a Jewish medical doctor), completely disappeared shortly before WWII.

However, it is interesting to learn that, in the midst of mustard gas attacks on their only defenders, the French found time to be inventing attractive designs for wrist watches, founded on designs of tracks of tanks that so ignominiously failed.

It's true as society becomes more vulgar, watches are increasing in size. Whereas the noble watch maker at one time wanted to demonstrate the horologist's art in engineering a svelte and urbane wristwatch that was significantly less cumbersome than a pocket watch, we now see the phallic rock/pimp your daddy gangsta' influence in full effect.

The reason that Rolex buy their own vintage watches is to manipulate the second hand market for their own nefarious purposes. They do service very old vintage watches, but for a price. A service on a Submariner will get you very little change from a GBP 1000.

The reason the Swiss became the pre-eminent watch makers was because of WWII, everyone else's watch factories got turned over to armament production and the Swiss never looked back. At least until the Quartz crisis/revolution of the 1970s which laid waste to many watch makers in Switzerland. It was the Swatch (Société Générale de l'Horlogerie Suisse SA), subsequently the Swatch Group that saved the Swiss watch making industry from complete annihilation by those dastardly Japanese.

I like wristwatches and have various vintage/new models and have owned a couple of the luxury brands over the years, but sold on, generally making a loss. Watches as investments, despite the Rolex BS, are not good long term investments and a seriously mass produced and machine made watch brand, such as Rolex, may one day reach over exposure and market saturation in which case second hand market by not be as bouyant as it appears to be now.

Here's an interesting article I came across on jewel superfluity.  Anyone into vintage wristwatches will be familiar with jewel counts and how some watchmakers in the early - mid twentieth century were in a sort of jewel race to come out with a watch with the most jewels.  I've got a Waltham with 65 jewels.  Probably 48 of those were for sheer marketing value.
http://people.timezone.com/library/workbench/workbench0025

I actually like Chen's look there to be honest.

His head is like a fractal of the rest of the outfit..in someways it is mathematically brilliant

Here's a really great watch forum.
http://forums.watchuseek.com/forum.php

I detest this phenomenon, quoted from the article FXH posted above:

"Men’s wristwatches are often ostentatiously bulky. Connections made by brands to the watches’ scientifically engineered qualities are crucial to the style they project, although the watches are as much stylish accessories. Interestingly, by the second decade of the twenty-first century, the watches of fashion-conscious women, especially in the corporate world, could be as flamboyantly large as those of men."

Oh... say what?  You spent $10,000 on that watch?  I'm sure it's a great watch, but it's damn ugly.

The last time I went to shop for a new watch I left disgusted after viewing the available options.

Who needs an antique watch when you can buy Google Smart Watch.

It's a good looking watch, but too rubbery looking.  No offense, but looks like something that would have really got my gonads jumping when I was on high school swim team.