Why a US$15,950 tourbillon watch is considered a steal

New York

WITH a price tag of US$15,950, the new Carrera Heuer-02T wristwatch from TAG Heuer - a brand often associated with "starter" Swiss luxury watches under US$3,000 - may strike budget- minded consumers as "mind boggling", as one watch site, Monochrome, put it; perhaps even "incredible", in the words of another, Hodinkee.

An entry-level timepiece for the price of a factory-fresh Japanese subcompact? I'll take the Honda.

To the watch cultists who inhabit sites like these, however, the new TAG is not an egregious example of price gouging but rather a steal, a timepiece so jaw-droppingly underpriced that there must be, according to the site aBlogtoWatch, some sort of sorcery involved.

What the wizards at TAG have done is conjure a tourbillon - an intricate, gyroscope-like mechanism long considered a holy grail for watch enthusiasts - at the luxury-watch equivalent of a Kmart blueligh…