Omega 321 for obvious reasons. The other legendary movement I would cite is the JLC 920 which powered the Holy Trinity sports watches for decades.

1. See it in person then sleep on it. If after a few weeks to months you still want it and can afford it, go for it.
2. My personal rule is no more than 1/3 of my disposable income (money after taxes/expenses) into watches.

More popular outside of Japan than in.

Bought 3 G-Shocks when I was a kid because my dad wears one and I thought they were cool. I still think they’re cool but the resin degraded over 2 decades and it’s not worth it to fix so 3 was definitely too many in hindsight. Kept 1 as a beater but no more.

I think it’s mostly a brand problem and not a watch quality problem. They got bought out in the 80s and has struggled to come up with their own identity ever since (similar to TAG Heuer’s trajectory in the 90s). Their big heavy hitter is the Navitimer, but they haven’t had any iconic new releases to capitalize on that heritage. Plus, at that price point it’s overshadowed by the Speedmaster, which is even more iconic than the Navitimer. All the desperate celebrity ambassador partnerships haven’t helped (TBF, Omega does the same thing, but Omega actually has the watch design variety to back the celebrity collabs up).

There are automatic Spring Drives just like mechanicals, but you need to wear them to keep up the power reserve. But the idea/appeal is that they don’t need batteries, which is why they’re considered “hybrid” quartz+mechanical.

Yeah it’s power like the other commenters posted. That’s the reason why Spring Drive took over 2 decades of development and such an innovative technology from Grand Seiko - they actually made a functioning prototype very early on (in the 80s) but it took 20 more years to solve how to reduce power usage which incidentally created the iconic smooth sweep. SD is your only option if you want a truly smooth sweep.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Watches/s/fGSLr3jP4d

I have since added an older used Speedmaster as well. Besides these 4 “luxury” ones I also have a G-Shock, Timex, Citizen Eco-Drive, and Seiko Presage as my affordables.

Something with a manual wind movement shows they really care about the mechanical aspect of watches.

Average? $3k. Want to stretch to at least one watch in the $15k range before I retire though haha