How Perfect Must You Be for Your Mistakes to Become Valuable?

When you are bigger than your flaws.

How flawless must you consistently be for even your errors to hold value? This might sound like an ambiguous question, but allow me to elaborate.

Imagine taking delivery of a brand-new Suzuki. When you get home, you realize a rear door hinge was installed on the wrong side, forcing passengers to awkwardly duck and twist to get into their seats. How would you react? You’d likely utter a few choice words and head straight back to the dealership in a rage. Now, imagine the same scenario with a different car. A much better car. A significantly better car. A Porsche.

You order a Porsche and have it delivered to your office. After a few minutes, you notice the passenger door hinge is installed on the wrong side. Interestingly, the door opens and closes perfectly, but it is, nonetheless, a major defect. Yet, this is a flaw committed not by a budget manufacturer, but by one of the finest automakers in the world. Here is the reality: that Suzuki would be worth less than its market price, but a Porsche with such an extraordinary anomaly might very well end up as a star attraction at a major auction.

So I ask again: How perfect must you be for your mistakes to become valuable? The answer: Immensely.

You must have spent your entire existence in an extraordinary pursuit of excellence, so that when an error finally occurs, it is no longer seen as a sign of negligence or lack of commitment, but as a breathtaking, almost admirable event. This is exactly what happened a few years ago with a specific Rolex Air-King (Ref. 116900). The anomaly was baffling: instead of the numeral ‘3’ at the three o’clock position, the watch featured a second ‘9’. (And yes, we wouldn’t blame you if you hadn’t noticed the error in the photo until this very moment).

This phenomenon becomes even more fascinating when you consider that Rolex’s quality control is widely regarded as the most reliable and rigorous product oversight process in the world. An assembler placed the wrong marker on the dial, and the watch somehow bypassed dozens of inspection filters to reach the customer’s wrist without anyone noticing. This was the curious case of the “Double 9” Rolex Air-King.

Even a mistake becomes a winning card when you are famous for an absolute and perpetual refusal to commit one. It would not be surprising if this Rolex soon surfaced at a major auction house with an astronomical price tag.

If you follow the global watch auction scene, you know that every so often, a timepiece with a glaring, irrational defect appears on the block. It is almost impossible for such an error to be committed by a brand that isn’t known for perfection; for any other brand, making a mistake is simply business as usual.

Looking back through the archives, I recall similar occurrences with Patek Philippe, Omega, Rolex, Audemars Piguet, and Cartier. In every single instance, these flawed pieces sold for prices far exceeding their original retail value.