Nobody buys a 1,500 dollar automatic because they need to know the time. The phone settled that argument a decade ago, more accurately than any mechanical movement ever will. So the hobby isn't about function, and pretending otherwise is why so much watch talk sounds slightly dishonest, all that earnest praise for a power reserve nobody's life depends on.
What people are actually buying is one of the last socially acceptable objects a man is allowed to care about openly. Not a gadget that's obsolete in two years, not jewelry he has to apologize for, but a small mechanical thing with provenance and weight that he can pass down. The wristwatch survived as the rare permitted vessel for that, and the revival is people reaching for it because most of the other vessels are gone.
I think that's worth saying plainly because it changes what counts as a good purchase. If the watch is really a feelings object, then movement specs and bezel materials are mostly theater, and the honest question isn't "is this horologically serious," it's "will this still mean something to me, or to someone, in thirty years." Most of the collection won't pass that test, and the spec sheet was never going to tell you which ones do.