I'd like to think I wouldn't, were I in that lucky position. Genuinely-made art, perhaps I might have some time and cash for, but expensive wrist baubles that exist solely for the purpose of extracting money from rich people to salve their ego? No.
I'd hope I'd consider it for barely a half second then elect instead to give that money to charity instead.
I'm regularly in this mind, walking as I do around London and seeing the sheer array of useless crap that monied people spend money on to advertise the fact they have money. Instead, I wonder at how many people's lives could have been eased if instead of that expensive car, they'd bought a car actually suited to this city.
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As an aside to this, I spent a week working at the house of a Rothschild a few years back. His admittedly fancy pad was utterly laden with artworks. His car, on the other hand, was a crappy small Japanese thing and he dressed about as scrappily as I do. I had a lot of respect for that chap.
I guess my point is that you don’t seem to know much about watches, and are basing your view on a caricature of ‘rich people’. To my eye, some watches certainly do look like silly baubles, but that is a question of taste.
For me, personally I look at the life of someone like Roger Smith, and envy his craftsmanship and dedication to mastery. I see a great deal of similarity between him, and say John Carmack - as dedicated masters of their medium.
I would like to own a Roger Smith watch, partly because it’s beautiful, and partly because I would like to live in a world where more people get to develop their skills, and where skills are passed on, and artistry is encouraged.
Of course it’s terrible that more people don’t have the opportunity to do this, but that doesn’t have anything to do with watches.
Well, in that case you sound like an exception to the generality, so good for you (and I mean that genuinely, not the British snarky mode it's usually delivered).
However, most people use such baublage to signify success and wealth, appropriately or not.
I don't think it snobbish (inversely or otherwise) for me to think that this is a sad squandering of resource and a more than slightly horrid aspect of the human character.
For fine art, maybe? For music, writing, theater, film and television, video games: seems like it's mostly about the enjoyment the patron gets from interacting with the art. The social signaling part strikes me as kind of squicky.
Maybe NFTs turn out to be a way to redirect that gross status-seeking impulse, to turn it into incentives to create art and income for artists without copyright, DRM, and associated ugliness. That would be a pretty cool hack! There's a decent chance it works.
Interesting - very good to know about the Tezos scene.
As for fxhash, I don’t see that being much more than a ‘because we can’. Nothing on there strikes me as worth money, since there is an infinite supply of art like that and there is no distinguishing character to it. The point of a Non-Fungible token goes away if the art itself is fungible.
At the higher levels, yes. At the low/local level I think it really is mostly about aesthetic appreciation and patronage— visit hipster cafe, see attractive piece on display, contact artist and negotiate price, display piece in your own home.
I don't think anyone talking seriously about "real world art buying" is referring to the digital representation of .... oh damn, this is a discussion about NFTs, isn't it.
If I was a billionaire, I would definitely own some $100K watches and probably have some million dollar artwork.
Why? Because some expensive watches are really nice, and so are some expensive paintings, and why wouldn’t I buy them if I could easily afford them?