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

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

Yiwen Lu

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.

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.

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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. Youll 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%.

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Jon Keegan

Trump’s deal offering top Nvidia chips to China was nixed at last minute, the WSJ reports

Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, really wants to sell the chipmakers most powerful Blackwell GPUs to China. He almost had his way.

According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, President Trump was ready to put Blackwell chips on the negotiating table for his meeting with Chinese President Xi to seek relief from Chinas decision to block crucial rare earth exports to the US.

But according to the report, Trump advisers presented a unified front and were able to dissuade him from giving up the most powerful chips to China at the last minute. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer were among those opposed to the chip deal. After the meeting, Trump said he did not talk with Xi about Nvidia’s “super duper” chips.

Reportedly those opposed to the deal cited national security concerns, as well as wanting to keep a competitive edge as China seeks to challenge the US’s current dominance of the AI industry.

But according to the report, Trump advisers presented a unified front and were able to dissuade him from giving up the most powerful chips to China at the last minute. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer were among those opposed to the chip deal. After the meeting, Trump said he did not talk with Xi about Nvidia’s “super duper” chips.

Reportedly those opposed to the deal cited national security concerns, as well as wanting to keep a competitive edge as China seeks to challenge the US’s current dominance of the AI industry.

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