Baselworld

Baselworld, as you all know, is this trade fair for watch-makers, held each year in Basel in a dedicated pavilion now with several specialist, added-on halls for specific kinds of designs and innovations.

I'm not sure whether I've said it before in this Blog, but I have been saying to several friends in a one-to-one setting that I've had the distinct impression ever since around the time a little bit before the Trump election, that there has been a drop-off in spending on luxury goods, a drop-off in the advertising in that sector, and a general decline in the visual presence of apparent 'wealth' everywhere.

This year's (2018) Baselworld figures completely supported that view, because there was a HUGE drop-off in the number of exhibitors, in fact roughly a half of them failed to show this year.

Boy, that's some drop-off.

Surely it could not have been the case that Hillary Clinton and all the people in that camp were the 'wealthy' people in the world and now they have all become pee'd off and taken their bat and ball away and gone into hiding...?

Answer: well YES! Yes, it was them. And yes, they were the wealthy people, because stealing from the public makes you rich!

They must have all consulted with their psychics just during the run-up to the US election, who all said that Hillary would be wiped out, and that would spell disaster for them and spell the end to their gravy train. What a shame.

'Cuz now that only leaves me and thee and maybe three other guys around the whole entire world with any real interest in spending attrocious and unjustifiable large sums of money on silly stoopid things and we ain't got any money anyway... Shame.

Well, actually I have a lot of money but I'm waiting for the interest rates to sky-rocket even more in the US and then all of a sudden I'll 'find' this satchel that I'd left or lost somewhere prolly in the garden shed out the back, or sumthin'...

Anyway so I gotta tell yer about expensive watches at Baselworld, see.

I have this big problem deciding what to spend my last half million on each time I get down to that 'nuther 'last half million' - on the one hand, people would at least notice me being driven up to the front doors of His Majesty's Theater in the heart of the city here, late, and in fact just to watch the catalog song from Don Giovanni out in the hall via the closed circuit screens, drink a glass of champagne and then toddle off to Billy Lee's to eat some Chinese dinner; if I were driven in a relatively decent Rolls.

This is 'just' a Casio, but it is made with Samurai sword
'murasaki-gane' gold alloy - around $7,000.

No one, absolutely no one though, would notice if I walked past the front doors, or went in ('to catch the catalog song from Don Giovanni...' LOL) wearing just a Gran Sasso Nile Cotton pullover and black slacks ($2,000), kangaroo hide slippers handmade bespoke from a Sydney crafts-person ($3,000), and a '*' (ain't tellin' you) brand Westminster chime tourbillon ($500,000) on my wrist - and I'd have had to borrow cash for the clothes and shoes.

There are a lot of things that make such watches so expensive, but one of them these days is the amazing new kinds of metals and glass or optically-clear materials and strange alloys.

One of the most amazing things they do nowadays is create these strange alloys of pure gold (around 75%) and ultra high grade ceramics, the latter of which is a porous substance and harder than gold - most of the really best watch internal mechanisms are made from 'Mich-au' or 'Michaud' or sometimes also called 'Michor;' combinations of ceramic and pure gold.

There is not much point trying to tell people who are not already 'in the sickness' for expensive watches and things like that, about the significance of design and the brilliance of particular designers.

No no no. Waste of time. Ding Dong!