More from the previous thread:

re: #233 Blind Frog Belly White

“Worth” has different meanings. If you would never sell it because it’s important to you, market value is meaningless.

But, yeah, this is the hidden cost of vintage watches. For example, I keep a spreadsheet of all my vintage wrist watches, with the price I paid for each. Over 200 watches, and the average price was $30.

Standard professional cleaning would be at least $100, probably more like $150, exclusive of any parts.

If I tried to sell them, even with a receipt from a professional watchmaker to prove they’d been recently serviced, I’d get an average of maybe $40-50.

Most vintage watches is not “worth” the cost of fixing them.

A lot of people have been convinced “worth=investment” as well. The most notable example of that I can think of is houses. “You bought your house at price X, the potential sale price is now Y, you can borrow money against it for item Z.”

I want to tear my hair out at all the people who tell me a house is an investment. No, dammit, my house is my place to live.

My wife and I paid $18,000 cash for our house, and have done improvements to it since Dec 2011 (the most notable being a new roof, replacing all the knob-and-tube electrical wiring with modern wiring, and replacing ancient plumbing). Outdoor improvements include having our collapsing carriage house (garage just big enough for our Smart) torn down and replaced with a new shed the same size, having both professionally painted (apparently it hadn’t been painted since 1914), and putting in a bunch of flower beds (my yellow irises are in bloom right now, and the blue ones are about to bloom). It is in no way an “investment.”

That kind of thinking comes from people who never had to do things like live without a home for eleven years. There is no circumstance under which I would borrow money against our house.