Three styles of the “Victory Tourbillon” watch. (GetTrumpWatches.com)

Watch expert says $100K Trump gold watch only costs $25K to make

9/27/24 4:23PM

ICYMI, Donald Trump is selling watches. Introducing “Victory Tourbillon”: 122 diamonds, 200 grams of 18 karat gold, and a tourbillon movement. With a hefty price tag of $100,000, to boot.

But the internet’s favorite Swiss watch technician – Alexander Colvin, aka @thewatchregulator – said that the watch is only worth probably a quarter of its price, at most.

Movement: $3,000

First up, what’s moving the watch? The Victory Tourbillon’s movement was made in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, by Olivier Mory, who founded the watchmaking company BCP Tourbillon, Colvin said. Mory’s productions were known to be accessible and affordable, starting around $3,000.

(A Wired article pointed out that Mory’s tourbillon was, ironically, half made in China, and half made in Switzerland.)

Even then, Colvin compared the Victory Tourbillon to a $7,350 ballard Onyx Tourbillon that BCP made:

We can clearly see that the level of finishing on the Trump tourbillon versus the finishing on the 7,500 dollar watch is far, far inferior, making me believe that this is probably the very cheapest tourbillon that BCP manufactures.

Gold: $13,000

Now, onto the price of the gold, which usually makes up the most value of, well, a gold watch. One gram of gold costs about $65; Trump claimed that his watch has 200 grams, so that’s 200 times $65 = $13,000.

Diamonds: $1,500

Colvin’s friend Shanyn Linklater, aka @shanyn.the.jeweller, added that the 122 Very Slightly Included 1 (VS1) diamonds on the watch were unlikely to cost more than $1,500.

Manufacturing: $7,500

Lastly, Colvin kindly added the cost of manufacturing the watch and said that the watch is worth $25,000 at most, so I subtracted that by the materials cost we’re left with about $7,500 in other production charges.

@thewatchregulator The new $100000 Donald Trump Tourbillon watch. #Trump #watchtok #Harris #election2024 #luxury #luxurywatches ♬ original sound - The Watch Regulator

According to the GetTrumpWatches website, these watches are sold by a company called TheBestWatchesonEarth LLC.

(Please excuse us briefly while we rename Sherwood News “TheBestNewsPlaceOnEarth”).

If you still plan to buy it, just know that the shipping starts “October/November/December,” so only pre-orders are being taken at this point. There are no refunds, either, with all sales final. But you can pay in Bitcoin, if that’s your thing.

Meta wins in FTC antitrust trial

The five-year long case results in another big win for Big Tech as companies evade aging antitrust laws.

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Congress votes to end shutdown

The over 40-day government shutdown came to an end without a guarantee that the ACA tax credits will be extended.

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OpenAI: The New York Times is forcing us to turn over 20 million ChatGPT conversations

A judge in the The New York Times’ copyright lawsuit against OpenAI (and Microsoft) has ordered that the ChatGPT maker hand over the conversations of 20 million users to the Times’ lawyers, in an effort to find examples of copyright violations.

Today, OpenAI is lobbying the public in a last-ditch effort to prevent the release, which is due Friday:

“The New York Times is demanding that we turn over 20 million of your private ChatGPT conversations. They claim they might find examples of you using ChatGPT to try to get around their paywall. This demand disregards long-standing privacy protections, breaks with common-sense security practices, and would force us to turn over tens of millions of highly personal conversations from people who have no connection to the Times’ baseless lawsuit against OpenAI.”

If the company’s final appeals to the court do not succeed, OpenAI explains that it will de-identify the chat logs, scrub any personally identifying information from the chats, and that technical experts hired by The New York Times’ legal team will be the only ones who can examine the data, which will be tightly controlled.

Fighting the New York Times’ invasion of user privacy

Today, OpenAI is lobbying the public in a last-ditch effort to prevent the release, which is due Friday:

“The New York Times is demanding that we turn over 20 million of your private ChatGPT conversations. They claim they might find examples of you using ChatGPT to try to get around their paywall. This demand disregards long-standing privacy protections, breaks with common-sense security practices, and would force us to turn over tens of millions of highly personal conversations from people who have no connection to the Times’ baseless lawsuit against OpenAI.”

Millie Giles

THE BILL, PLEASE

11/10/25

The Senate just advanced a deal that could end the government shutdown

Prediction markets have done a U-turn as Washington looks to end the longest government shutdown in US history.

USA government shutdown, political crisis concept illustration

Max Knoblauch11/4/25

Big four airlines sink as Transportation Secretary Duffy says parts of US airspace could close if shutdown continues

The US may close parts of its airspace as early as next week if the government shutdown continues, according to comments made by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Tuesday.

“If you bring us to a week from today, Democrats, you will see mass chaos. You will see mass flight delays. You’ll see mass cancellations, and you may see us close certain parts of the airspace, because we just cannot manage it,” Duffy said at a news briefing on Tuesday.

The shutdown, which entered its 35th day on Tuesday, has fueled already problematic shortages of air traffic controllers. This week, airlines said 3.2 million passengers have faced delays or cancellations because of the shortages. Last week, about 13,000 air traffic controllers and 50,000 TSA agents received their first $0 paycheck amid the shutdown.

Shares of the big four US airlines all sank on Duffy’s comments, with United Airlines, American Airlines, and Delta Air Lines all down more than 5%.