I promise, I'm not a spy from Citizen. I'm just a curious guy who is new to the hobby. I often watch YouTube videos about watches and it's very common to see "10 AFFORDABLE WATCHES YOU MUST BUY!" or a Teddy Bulbasaur video that says "This watch is super affordable & has an entry level price point" then the watch is $595. Hell, right now I'm watching a video about Citizen & the list is saying affordable is under $1000. My limit currently is $250 for a watch. MAYBE, if I save for a bit I'll raise it to 300. (Disclaimer: I'm in Japan so $250 goes much further. I have a Seiko 5 cement for $120ish.)
I know we all come from different backgrounds and have different financial situations. "Affordable" for you may not be affordable for me. That is perfectly fine. I'm just very curious as when collections are shown in this sub, I like to Google the watch. Often times it's a multi thousand dollar watch.
Thank you all & I'm looking forward to hearing your stories.
I personally consider affordable below 1k for automatic watches, and below 500 for quartz. Notable exception to the rule is G-Shock. :-)
In all honesty, deminishing returns in some cases start with automatic watches above 500. But most of the established brands crossed that long time ago. Even microbrands - I have recently purchased Wise AD9 in 904L steel because it is affordable for 904L watch with Miyota 9-series - but it also crossed over 500 bucks. I love it more than my Tissots from the similar price range (and those are also 316L) and it comes damn close in overall feeling to SPB143 which I absolutely love (after replacing the bracelet with 3rd party one, which I also didn't need to invest in with Wise).
So that is likely where watch community influencers come from - 1000 is a nice and round number and in reality, for most of the established brands, around $1000 buys you a lot of watch technically speaking and gains beween $1000 and $2000 or $3000 are topically smaller than what you get by bumping your budget from $500 to $1000 with those brands.