"parts" doesn't do much. Rolex dissolved their independent repair network in 2020, bought Bucherer in 2023, won't repair anything older than 30 years and is fiercely protective of their trademarks.

You're not servicing a Rolex for less than $900, I don't care what Rolex it is. Not only that, but for years and years the movement you bring your Rolex in with is not the movement your Rolex leaves with - their repair process is "bring in the watch, strip it down, separate out all the parts, evaluate parts in groups, get rid of bad parts, substitute new parts, put everything back together again and return to the owner."

The "watch" as an item of jewelry is tied to the caseback, because the caseback is the only thing with a serial number on it. And the caseback can absolutely be lost - "oops! My caseback flew off! Could you please service my Rolex, Rolex?" and the thing is, Rolex is such an outsized monster in the Swiss watch industry that batshit things happen like other major watch brands heisting their supply trucks to manufacture counterfeit Rolexes.

For everybody else, "serializing watch parts" is no easy affair. There's only a handful of parts big enough to fit a microQR.

"Demand" isn't the issue. There's a massive waiting list for pretty much everything anyway. The issue is "portability." Watches and jewelry have long been one of the basic currencies of black market transactions. They're easy to smuggle, poorly tracked and often consist primarily of gold.

But the real issue is the watch industry is such a hide-bound fossil that stupid shit happens. This is a market segment that started measuring things in ligne a hundred fucking years after the invention of the metric system.