Watches like this $455,000 timepiece can’t be made by a machine—and that’s exactly why they’re the ultimate flex amid the analog revival

Kevin Koenig, a Connecticut-based yacht consultant, was recently helping a prospective client buy his first boat. Koenig nurtures a 278,000-strong Instagram community under the handle @theyachtfella. The Yacht Fella is also a Watch Fella, and he and his client got to talking, as horology nerds do, about their metal. “I asked him what his ‘daily’ is,” Koenig recalls.

To his yacht-aspiring wrist, the buyer buckles a Rolex Oyster Perpetual Explorer II, a watch designed to commemorate Sir Edmund Hillary’s 1953 summit of Everest. Turns out Koenig’s daily is also a Rolex Explorer II, though his model is the Polar, whose avalanche-white face is coveted by collectors. Regardless: Twinsies! Said Koenig to his fellow explorer, “I knew I liked you.”

Neither Koenig nor his buyer has plans to trek to Everest or, per Rolex, “into the unknown, where the boundary between night and day is blurred.” But the Explorer II binds the men in a common narrative—that if they wanted to, their timepiece would have a glow-in-the-dark Chromalight display to aid their perilous ascent.

That feature is what’s known in horology as a “complication.” The term encompasses everything from second hands to details that follow the positions of planets; it can be as straightforward as a GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) hand that tracks an alternate time zone or as intricate as a tourbillon, a byzantine mechanism that counteracts the effect of gravity on timekeeping.

Unlike in most relationships, complications in the timepiece world are highly desired. They hint that the wearer has stories to tell, that they’re the type who needs to know the exact time in Berlin while they’re lingering over omakase in Vancouver. They also signal a connoisseur’s appreciation for the kind of exacting craftsmanship that only a human can execute.

Collectors covet these pieces, explains Yoni Ben-Yehuda, head of watches for luxury retailer Material Good, because “similar to the handmade stitches on a Birkin bag, machines simply cannot do these complications”—a comforting notion and powerful value proposition as we cruise, driverless,........

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