Collectors are the end buyers, who ultimately create the value; but the existence of collectors as a predictable sink, permits the trading of the thing they collect as a medium of exchange and (short-term) store of value.

Similar to fine art. For every purchase of a painting by a collector who's actually going to display it, there are 10-100 being purchased by people who're going to keep them in freeport awaiting resale.

Basically like commodities futures. You don't buy onion futures because you have anything you would personally do with multiple tonnes of onions.

> I collect watches worth >$100k

It's off topic for this thread, but I'd totally read a blog post about that hobby :)

Obviously, per definition a collector is probably a watch nerd.

But I think the point is that if I want to transport money from one country to another, I can buy a watch for 30k, take it to the other country, and sell it to a collector relatively easy for probably the same amount of money.

Same if I wanna give a bribe to somebody, I can give them a watch for worth 30K and they can easily sell it for cash to a collector for 30K.

So that person would not be a collector. They would just use it to transfer the value.

What's the appeal of collecting high priced watches? Is it kind of like art collections, where its a decent store of value while maintaining a collection of something you are personally interested in? Or is it more for "love of the game"?

Not saying its not a cool thing to collect, well made watches are a very cool piece of engineering, I'm just curious if there's any "special" appeal outside of "i like this thing and have the money to enjoy it" :)

What people can actually do is buy a watch then return it in another branch in another country after paying a "restocking" fee.

It's very blatant and below that range. They got many orders for the exact same model that's around $50k.