By Ponderer October 9, 2024 7:21 pm Category: Celebrities
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Trump’s $100,000 Watches Are the Most Tragic Celebrity Watch Yet
Former president Donald Trump wants you to buy gaudy, overpriced timepieces “made for those who combine boldness and elegance.” He got one part right.
Celebrities partnering with watch brands is nothing new. Sometimes a bona fide watch enthusiast like John Mayer partners with Audemars Piguet, or Ed Sheeran (owner of a unique Patek Philippe, no less) teams up with Casio. Then there's the other end of the scale, where controversial Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy and his own watch company resides.
Now, however, there’s a new nadir: the Trump Watch. Announced this week by former US president Donald Trump, the collection consists of two pieces. One is called “Fight Fight Fight” and is priced from $499, and the other is the “Victory Tourbillon.” The latter is claimed to be made from solid 18-karat gold, with 122 diamonds and a tourbillon automatic movement. It’s priced at a nice, round $100,000—about three times the price of an equivalent Rolex Submariner—and, yes, crypto payment is available.
The watches are claimed to feature “premium, Swiss-Made materials and intricate details,” but so far as we can tell, the Fight Fight Fight uses a movement by Japanese company Seiko, while the Victory Tourbillon has a movement alleged to be partially built from Chinese components.
It gets better. In what quickly starts to resemble the tweet-riddled fever dreams of the extremely online, the watches are produced by a company called TheBestWatchesonEarth LLC, which is based in Sheridan, Wyoming, and, despite no watchmaking history to speak of, has a license agreement to use the Trump name for its timepieces.
“We also accept Bitcoin as payment!”, the GetTrumpWatches website yells, as if handing over actual dollars to a company who admits the images of the timepieces “are for illustration purposes only” isn’t enough to raise an eyebrow.
We’ll come back to the Tourbillon in a moment. For now, let's look at the cheaper of the two, called the Fighter. At least that’s what the website address suggests it’s called, but it’s also described as the “Fight Fight Fight Watch”—and in the description of the black and gold colorway it’s “The Fight Fight Fight Black Watch.” Either way, it resembles a Rolex Submariner described down a patchy phone line.
But don’t just take our word for it. WIRED Watch expert Tim Barber told us: “Trump evidently has some cut-through among certain watch fans, since the gold sneakers he auctioned earlier this year were bought by Roman Sharf, one of the most prominent gray-market watch dealers, with a sizable YouTube following." (Incidentally, the companies that made the gold sneakers and the new Trump Watches were established by the same register agent, Andrew Pierce of Cloud Peak Law, Wyoming.)
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Now for the Tourbillon, the $100,000 flagship of the Trump watch collection. “This isn’t just any watch,” the former president said. “It’s one of the best watches made,” he adds without context.
Limited to 147 pieces—although the website admits they’re made to order—the watch is offered with a solid gold case and dial, a gold case and black dial, or a rose gold case and dial. All three have the “Trump” name at the twelve o’clock position and a window revealing their tourbillon movement within.
The watch is claimed to use a “TX07 Tourbillon” with 105 hours of power reserve, but finding any record of such a movement online is tricky. Watch commentator Nico Leonard van der Horst said in an Instagram post: “This is hilarious … the manufacturer of this movement is Olivier Mory, who ironically is known for making very affordable Tourbillons half made in China, half made in Switzerland.” Van der Horst added: “If you were to buy this movement and put it in your own watch, you would be able to buy it for under $3.5k.”
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