My current watches are all under $300 as they check a lot of boxes for me . If I was to spend $500 on a watch I’d do Tissot Hamilton or Baltic.

For a dress watch I have a dark teal colored Vostok 58 which are like $50 manual wind. No one here is going to consider Vostok fancy as it’s very utilitarian Soviet design but the 58 is interesting to me. It’s good looking, slim, brand history, easily polished to looking new and it costs pocket change for people looking at rolexes. It’s cheap but if you dominantly wear an apple watch, something simple no one is thinking about will blow others out of the water

Unrelated: I went to the same schools as the maker of brew and it’s popular enough where our university had him design a watch for the university alumni. It’s dull and not offensive but the case back is kinda cool. He teaches at the university too now