I’ve been collecting for eons now (well, I’m a young 41 so maybe not eons) but I do have to say, I don’t think I’ve ever seen quite the levels of experimentation on the pricing side that we’re seeing in the watchmaker community now.

Sign your name. Put down a deposit. Join the Kickstarter.

Not to get all curmudgeonly here with a “Back in my day, we just bought shit.”

But yeah. I mean, we did.

And these days, on some level, you could be forgiven for finding this all pretty annoying. None of these arrangements is automatically a problem, per se, but I do want four things in plain sight and they almost never are:

• the full price of what I’m getting,
• what’s due now,
• whether I can get it back, and
• At the very latest, when is this watch gonna be on my friggin wrist?

On the occasion that this information is both available and easily found I’m reminded that all of this pricing inventiveness… is actually kinda smart, and often… it’s the only way we’d get these brands off the ground to begin with.

I saw five versions this week:

	01 / Follow.Colomer & Sons’ The Collector is at the notify-me stage. Five dial concepts, but no price or launch date yet. You’re joining a list, not placing an order. It’s still a commitment, especially with the way inboxes are jamming up with marketing spam lately.
	02 / Reserve.Biatec’s Marína pair has a free, non-binding reservation. The 3,990-Euro set only becomes a binding preorder after a later 1,995-Euro deposit… if production proceeds. 😅
	03 / Put down half.Forward’s Palo Duro is asking for a $275 non-refundable deposit option. (That smaller number is the first payment, not the $550 price.) It’s a good thing you can trust it.
	04 / Back a campaign. Understated darling Svalbard has the HX18 and HX19 and is taking the crowdfunding route alongside their store preorders. A campaign pledge isn’t a watch on a warehouse shelf; December is the stated delivery target.
	05 / Preorder.Makoto’s white-dial Senshi is back for another batch. Red and gray are in stock; white means waiting. Same model, three colors, two different buying experiences.