I agree with several things in TFA but you're right that some people just love these because they look beautiful.

TFA says this:

> If mechanical watches had only been accurate to a minute a day they couldn't have made the leap from keeping time to displaying wealth.

I don't think it's necessarily about displaying wealth: we could discuss humans (not just women but also men) wearing some kind of jewelry since thousands of years, including poor people who don't do it to display wealth but just because they enjoy the look of it. There was an article about monkeys enjoying the looks of crystals the other day I think.

One example would be people who don't dress nicely and who drive a cheap car and overal look like they just don't care about what others do think, and yet wear a dive watch. There are countless dive watches, be it a cheap no-name one, a perfect chinese replica of a Rolex Submariner (some replicas have most parts that can be exchanged with real Rolexes, which created the entire "frankenwatch" thing: where some parts are from the true brand and others have been swapped by chinese parts) or a real Rolex Submariner or Sea-Dweller costing $10 K to $20 K (for the base models).

Also in an age of alienating technology, something has to be said about a 100% mechanical device that's not connected to anything and doesn't require a battery to work, however imprecisely: it's not just about the beauty of the object when you look at it. It's also the beauty in having something that's not spying on you.

Just like there are people who, for a variety of reason, only ever take out their old Ferrari for a spin at night (when there's no trafic).

I take it you could very probably say: "Most people own fancy mechanical watches and high-end sport cars to flaunt wealth". But you can't generalize to 100% of watch owners and Ferrari owners.