Just picked up an old Cartier Tank Vermeil for cheap and sent it for restoration. Out of curiosity after reading this article on
custom-order Cartier watches (my first time hearing about the service), my dad and I made queries about it while at Cartier. Not that it is cheap by any stretch of the imagination, but we were pleasantly surprised at the price Cartier quoted on the lower end for getting a steel watch with a bespoke dial made to order, considering the stature of the house and the rarefied world their bespoke work typically occupies. Of course, not everyone can just walk in with cash and expect a commission to be placed, just like with other prominent, more mass-market luxury brands that still take on bespoke, craft-intensive work on the down low.
My dad and I are far from high-rollers, it's just that he used to do some handyman work for a very discreet private members' gambling club for old money types, and those guys would regularly throw in whatever watch they happened to be wearing as wagers when they ran out of cash on hand. My dad would get them from the club at low prices, sell it on and split the profit with the old club custodian/tea lady who was in on this whole thing. Hence the Cartier connection far out of proportion to our family's circumstances, due to the many pieces sent in for servicing and authentication before resale. I still remember how the watch my parents wore would be an indicator of how good the year was... Rolex 16613, even a Patek annual calendar for a brief period, right down to battered hand-me-down Seiko 5s when things weren't going well. We never could afford these watches. It was always at best a question of how long could we afford to hold on to these watches before reselling them.
Once, we passed on a Lange Saxonia for $1500 (you read that right) because the trust fund kid that owned it somehow cracked the movement mainplate. No way we were taking on a watch that had been through so much abuse that structural components of the movement was damaged.