Swiss Creation Keeps Time, but Price Tag Could Stop a Clock

Time is money. But the bill usually doesn’t run this high.

The famed Swiss designer Gerald Genta is coming out with a new wristwatch that, more or less like an ordinary Swatch, tells time. Only it costs about $249,965 more.

Who in the world would want to buy a timepiece costing a quarter of a million dollars, even if it is an extremely rare and fancy Tourbillon Minute Repeater? “Someone who just doesn’t want to be a me-too person and can afford it,” said Stuart Barish, vice president of the New York distributor, Gerald Genta North America.

“There’s arrogance involved,” he added, “but it’s also ego and pride, so why not?”

Well, aside from world poverty and other possible reasons, the band is simply leather, and the watch itself, unlike most in this price range, isn’t studded with precious gems. It isn’t even watertight.

“I don’t think you’d want to go swimming with it,” Barish said.

Also, you could buy a Volvo for what you’d save in New York city and state sales taxes alone by doing without the Genta creation.

But none of that seems to have dampened interest in the watch, which is being touted as the most expensive “pure” watch--in other words, one that isn’t intended as jewelry--ever made. Already, people are lining up to buy the first one, which is due to arrive in this country early next year.

“The piece probably will be sold before it even gets in a case. We have a dozen prospects waiting to hold it in their hands,” said Anthony D’Ambrosio, executive director of Tourneau, the New York dealer that has the right to sell the first Tourbillon Minute Repeater.

“A quarter-million for a watch makes more sense to me than a $50-million painting,” he added, when asked to explain why someone would want to spend $250,000 on a timepiece. If you use the watch for one year, that would be a little less than a penny a tick.

The Swiss-made watches will be cranked out at the rate of two or so a year, and sometime in 1990 the Princess Ermine Jewels shop at the Beverly Hilton might have one to sell too.

For the money, the buyer will get some special features. Made of more than 600 parts, it can be set to chime every minute, every 15 minutes or at nearly any other interval.

The watch also offers a perpetual calender, meaning that it makes automatic adjustments for months of varying lengths. In fact, one lever kicks in just once every four years, when Feb. 29 arrives on leap year.

“It just works with gears and levers, the old-fashioned way,” D’Ambrosio said.

The device also is noted for its “skeleton” housing, which lets you see the parts inside.

Genta, the designer, is part of the attraction too. “He works on the watch by hand and mind,” Barish said.

Genta is “the Picasso of watches,” Barish boasted.

All in all, promoters say that the watch should appeal to the wealthy collector who admires the best in pre-high-tech craftsmanship and artistry.

The psychology of the buyer figures into the equation, too. David Stewart, a social psychologist who is a marketing professor at USC, said there always will be a market for ultra-expensive products as long as there are newly rich people “who are insecure in their new status in life and need the symbols of that status as a way of dealing with their insecurity.”