[albroland]

>you must keep the patina or it loses value?

That's exactly it, especially among vintage rolex collectors. They have a bunch of slang for describing different ways things have aged eg the tritium paint on the dial having faded into a desirable cream color (creamy lume!), the hand's lume matching (implying it is the original paint on both the dial and hands), the dial itself could have any variety of sun damage like spidering or spotting, and on the GMT's in particular the color on the insert can fade so you might find yourself looking at a "fuchsia GMT". There is also a huge aversion to polishing of any kind.

This also can end up creating a lot of drama with Rolex itself if they send the watch in for factory service with instructions that end up not being honored. If you poke around on forums you'll see some very angry customers who specified no polishing, no replacing of worn/patina'd components like hands or dials, who got their watch back with a bunch of factory new parts.

[JohnBooty]

For those not involved in the watch hobby, I'd also like to point out that Rolex collecting is just one particular niche.

There are a lot of folks in the hobby who are really passionate about e.g. super affordable Seikos and Casios and don't "graduate" to super pricey stuff.

For years, I'd assumed that watch collecting was sort of a money spending contest. Not so. I've found it super welcoming, accessible, and honestly not necessarily expensive. (Though you can certainly spend unlimited amounts of money if you wish