I got into it after reading the book Longitude. As someone who grew up sailing, who'd learned celestial navigation as a kid, I thought it'd be nifty to have that tech on my wrist. Plus I like that it's possible to understand exactly how it works. Now I have a small collection.
One of my watches, a Hamilton, cost me $700 and as long as I wear it, keeps time within a couple seconds a day, which was good enough to win the Longitude Prize in the 1700s with essentially the same tech. Lots of really expensive watches don't do any better. Hamilton is a brand that goes back to the 1800s, just like the expensive guys.
My only watch that cost over $1000 is from a guy in Denmark, a watch reviewer who decided to make his perfect watch. He hired a designer, spent a couple years blogging about the whole process, made it the best quality he could, produced 300 watches, and sold them at at a modest profit for $2700 each. I wore it in my wedding. To anyone else it's just another anonymous watch.
Lots of mechanical watch enthusiasts like quartz watches too. I have one I quite like that's solar powered. Just like a mechanical, I won't have to replace the battery in a few years.
I usually don't need to know the time to the exact second, and I generally have my phone with me anyway. But when I wear the Hamilton, for fun I usually check against time.gov every day or two to see how it's doing, and adjust to the exact time if it's off by more than a few seconds. I've seen it be exactly accurate after a week.
It’s completely fine if it makes people happy but it’s also in a lot of way manipulative and disingenuous. That’s why I hate industries which are purely marketing based.
Not everything is some ugly marketing conspiracy. People have appreciated beautiful, clever things for as long as they've been making them.
Even though I am not the kind of person who would spend an insane amount of money on a watch, I still think the elegance of the manufacturing of a piece like the one under discussion is really impressive and interesting.
In the other comment, someone mention Vacheron Constantin watches can be off by as much as a minute per week! This is bad enough that I'd call a watch like that "unusable".
I don't think mine loses a minute per week, but it isn't perfect. Noticing the watch is a minute or two behind once a month and quickly popping out the dial to roll it forward is not a meaningful hassle for me.
Relative to a battery watch, it's nice that the watch is a self-contained functional unit. It will "always" be functional, even if I've left it in a drawer for a few years (always in quotes because of course anything can break).
Part of it is also just that I like to think about the mechanical complexity and elegance of it. It gives me a little bit more joy than my battery watches (but I still have plenty of battery watches that I like!), and that's something I appreciate.
They are poor timekeeping pieces bottom feeding from the expensive brand marketing. A quartz movement in the same body is an all around improvement except for the smugness.