Crystal Replacement Quoted at $1,200, Owner Learns It's the Same Material as a Wine Glass

Watch owner Dennis Kramer, 44, experienced what he described as 'a fundamental crisis of value' Tuesday when he learned that the $1,200 replacement sapphire crystal for his IWC Aquatimer is made of the same material -- synthetic corundum -- used to manufacture the $8 wine glass he dropped on the crystal in the first place. 'The service advisor told me it was sapphire,' Kramer said. 'I said great, sapphire, that sounds expensive and worthwhile. Then I went home and Googled it and discovered that sapphire crystal is synthetic aluminum oxide, which is also used in scratch-resistant wine glasses, phone screen protectors, and the windows of grocery store barcode scanners.' The material, produced by the Verneuil process at temperatures exceeding 2,000 degrees Celsius, is indeed chemically identical whether it covers a $22,000 dive watch or protects the scanner at a Trader Joe's checkout lane. The difference, according to IWC, is in the precision of cutting, the quality of anti-reflective coating, and the tolerance to which the crystal is shaped to fit the case. 'A watch crystal is not a wine glass,' said IWC's head of after-sales service, Markus Schott. 'It is cut to tolerances of plus or minus 0.02 millimeters, polished on both surfaces, coated with seven layers of anti-reflective treatment, and pressure-tested to 300 meters. The wine glass is not.' Kramer acknowledged the technical distinction but remained unconvinced. 'My grocery store scanner works great,' he said. 'I've never had a readability issue at checkout. And they didn't charge me $1,200 for the privilege.' The IWC service center has offered a 10 percent discount on the replacement, noting that the original damage was caused by 'impact with a wine glass, which is itself sapphire, meaning the owner essentially scratched sapphire with sapphire, which is the horological equivalent of a friendly fire incident.' Kramer is considering the repair. 'I'm going to do it,' he said. 'But I'm drinking out of plastic from now on.'