Grand Seikos are some of the best mechanical watches. Their quartz line is also exceptional. Very underrated and much prefer them over overpriced Rolex.
The Spring Drive movement is amazing, very accurate, very high quality and that smooth sweeping seconds hand is mesmerizing. Availability is good, and the price is a lot better than the high-end Swiss brands.
Rolex these days is a joke, even the authorized dealers will rip you off shamelessly. They will either refuse to sell you a watch they have in store, or they will force you to buy 30 grand in extra jewelry just to get the Rolex you want.
It's a mechanical movement regulated by quartz. In a traditional mechanical movement, the escapement prevents the main spring from unwinding all at once. It is done with a fork which ticks at a certain rate governed by the balance wheel. In a Spring Drive movement, the escapement is replaced with an electromagnetic "brake" governed by a quartz crystal. So it still has many of the characteristics of a mechanical watch: it's still powered entirely by a main spring which can be wound or automatically wound by your body movements, it needs regular maintenance like other mechanical watches, and it isn't as durable as most quartz-only watches.
That's true but it's still driven by a spring and mainly mechanical. I understand people who don't like it, but I also see it as a reasonable tradeoff and find them just as fascinating as purely mechanical models. In the end people wear them for the same reasons.
I agree with you. I used to stock up gold Rolexes as investment but sold them when their value peaked during the pandemic. For collection purposes? Rolexes are duds.