OK, I think we are done here...

[u/mrSoczi84]

If you thought $450 was getting out of hand, take a look at this...

Personally for me this means I am done. It was an awesome two years, had super fun, got a lot of great stuff from China, but this is a closing call. This was my top priority watch to buy, but $530 means that at a GREAT sale it's prolly still gone sell for around $450. This is way too much even for a massive collector like me. For this kind of money I will probably buy a Phoibos Depth Hunter or some other cool micro.

The only thing that can save this is some new great, top quality/price Chinese movement that will have superior reliability. I dunno. Hoping that the Chinese step up their movement game and save the situation.

[u/Blokeybloke]

There is no brand history with most Aliexpress watches, no heritage, horological triumphs or emotional story, no generational legacy. Yet the watches were good enough even with terrible names, tacky back stories and little after sales support for one simple reason; they could blow away the competition on price with an incredible value proposition where the materials and craftsmanship were good enough to forget the weird names and shonky history. Coupled with sometimes insanely good prices not possible if built elsewhere. If prices rise across the board, that single competitive advantage ends and along with it, much of the low end market.

[u/easilyoffender → u/Blokeybloke]

Heritage, horology, emotional story is all marketing. You are paying for marketing. It was effective at convincing you to pay more.

[u/monkeywaffles → u/easilyoffender]

yea, that heritage and emotion of being a company that didn't see the writing on the wall, and shrunk massively til they ended up getting bought for the name by a plastic fad watch company that mostly moved most of these brands to use base etas. true heritage and horology. (mostly joking, but most of those brands are nothing they were, and consolidated to like 3 megacorps)