That and a surge of wealth creation helps account for the staggering record prices vintage watches have begun to fetch at auctions like one held in Switzerland last November, where a Paul Newman Rolex Daytona — a stainless steel sports watch that cost less than $500 when new in 1969 — tripled its high estimate to sell to an anonymous buyer for $1.1 million.

Image A 36-millimeter Patek Philippe Grand Complications watch. Credit Christian Hansen for The New York Times

Figures like that help account for the buying sprees recently embarked on by multinationals like Kering, which in July acquired the niche Swiss watchmaker Ulysse Nardin for an undisclosed sum (Citibank analysts estimated it at close to $871 million), making it the company’s third major purchase of a watch or jewelry brand in three years. And they ramp up anticipation of other records being shattered when Swiss auction houses roll out their latest offerings next month — among them the ultra-rare Patek Philippe Henry Graves Supercomplication, not seen on the market in 15 years and estimated to fetch as much as $16.5 million by the time the hammer falls.

“Wristwatch-collecting is only about 20 years old,” said Reginald Brack, senior vice president for watches at Christie’s. “Ten years ago we were doing $8 million a year, and now we’re doing close to $150 million worldwide.”

Mr. Roizin of Watch Anish said, “I do feel this is the strongest generation for watch collecting.”

If not quite in the category of collector “whales,” Hampton Carney, a 43-year-old Red Bar fan, is as good a representative of contemporary collector aficionados as any. Starting with his grandfather’s 1930s Longines watch, a gift from an aunt when he graduated from high school, Mr. Carney, a Manhattan publicist (who has represented watchmakers on occasion) has gone on to amass a collection of nearly three dozen examples from prestige brands.

“You have watches you wear and watches you love but don’t wear,” said Mr. Carney, who stores a collection with a value roughly equal to the price of an average American house in a custom-fitted gun safe in his apartment. “It’s definitely an addiction.”

Yet it’s an agreeable addiction, according to George Jewett, a San Francisco architect whose affection for the watches he owns goes well beyond their utility. “Sure, you can look at the cellphone and get the time,” Mr. Jewett said. But your cellphone is unlikely to stimulate memories of the day you married, Mr. Jewett added, when his wife, Brenda, made him a gift of a Rolex Datejust, or of that moment when his father passed on to him a treasured Patek Philippe.

For that matter, a cellphone won’t carry anything like the freight of emotion summoned up when Mr. Jewett fishes his first watch from its spot in the sock drawer.

“It’s a Mickey Mouse watch,” Mr. Jewett said. “I still have it. And it still keeps time.”