Watches have evolved well beyond their primary utilitarian purpose of telling time, and even beyond their role as indicators of style and status. Now they are about connoisseurship.

Building a watch collection has become a journey into a world of almost limitless options that requires careful consideration and perhaps even some investment savvy. Of course, resale value should never be the main reason to buy a watch, but it pays to be mindful that mistakes can be expensive. Most watch collections evolve — and the last thing you want is to end up with a drawer full of esoteric impulse buys that neither you nor eager resale shoppers want.

Here are five categories of watches that define the market now and why they are important. Pick one timepiece from each category — even if it’s not an example included here — and you would have a comprehensive collection.

Vintage, Neo-vintage and Revival

Luxury watches are the collective yield of generations of Swiss watchmakers who, hunkering over their benches in the snowy enclaves of the Jura mountains in the 16th and 17th centuries, invented everything that still counts as the foundation of mechanical watchmaking. There have been tweaks and improvements over the years, but the essentials remain the same, and most top brands have catalogs rooted in this heritage.

Vintage means three things: actual vintage, watches made before 1980; neo-vintage, made from 1980 to around 2010 (after that, they are just pre-owned); and vintage style, either reissues of archival models or watches that have the general look of vintage, with minimalist dials, small cases and traditional functions.

Right now, both the real thing and vintage look-a-likes make up a hot category.

A good example of a modern reissue based on a vintage model is the Breitling Premier Duograph ($22,850 in 18-karat rose gold). Introduced in 1943, the Premier was one of the first chronograph watches made for the public rather than for pilots and military professionals, and the Premier Duograph was one of the earliest rattrapante chronographs (which can time two events simultaneously) designed for the wrist.

“We went into the archives, looked at the outstanding examples of horological complications that Breitling did in the 1940s and decided to relaunch the Duograph because it is the most complex interpretation of the chronograph,” said Fred Mandelbaum, Breitling’s heritage director who is widely acknowledged as owner of the world’s largest collection of vintage Breitlings.

The new Duograph, however, is not an exact replica of the original; it is a modern interpretation, with technical updates.

Original Duographs, Mr. Mandelbaum said, are rare: “It took me years to hunt mine down.”

“But if you are lucky enough to find one, you’d see it’s every bit as reliable as the modern version,” he continued. “Vintage watches are miracles of longevity. As absurd as it sounds, a well-made, well-serviced watch from the 1940s is as functional now as it was then, unlike vintage cars. If you have at a vintage car, even from the 1960s, they’re lovely to look at but actually a horror to drive on a daily basis.”

The Superwatch

After a decade of palate-cleansing vintage minimalism, drama is returning to the wrist.

Modern maximalism is reminiscent of the superwatches of the late 1990s and early aughts, when mechanical watchmakers competed to make the biggest, boldest and most complicated pieces. They were extroverted beasts, with thick spaceshiplike cases, multilayered dials and 3-D openwork movements, often tricked out with double tourbillons.

The goal, aside from showmanship, was to reinterpret traditional haute horology using modern design codes. The superwatch was never made with discretion in mind, but the current take on the theme does seem a bit more refined.

Micro-thin watchmaking has become a complication in itself, and putting a complex movement into a smaller space is now part of the show. Still, the superwatch is a wristful of drama that might not fit under your cuff, or into your budget, but it remains an object of awe.

An example is the Audemars Piguet Code 11.59 Universelle RD#4 (starting at 1.45 million Swiss francs, or the equivalent of $1.56 million). It is the most complicated wristwatch Audemars Piguet has ever made, with 40 functions (23 complications and 17 technical devices), grande sonnerie supersonnerie and petite sonnerie (both types of minute repeaters that chime the time in different sequences), a split-seconds flyback chronograph (to time multiple events), flying tourbillon (a tourbillon without an upper bridge so more of the mechanism is visible), perpetual calendar and moon phase.

Yet all this and more fits in a case measuring 42 millimeters wide and 15.55 millimeters thick (a little more than 1.5 inches by 0.5 inches), unlike the equally complicated but massive pocket watches of the early 1900s that inspired it.

“Our brief was quite simple,” said Lucas Raggi, the brand’s research and development director. “We were told to create the grand complication of the 21st century. We wanted to make one that you can wear comfortably every day without the risk of damaging it. We did an openworked dial to give it a more contemporary look, and we put it in the Code 11.59 collection as opposed to the Royal Oak because we wanted a case that is more complex and therefore open to various interpretations.” (The first three RD models were Royal Oaks.)

“The goal,” he said, “was not just to join the competition of putting the maximum number of complications in the watch. It was about creating a coherent, yet still a very complicated watch.”

Color

The 1980s and early ’90s were the heyday of cheap quartz fashion watches, and they were all about color. In fact, it was colorways that distinguished fashion watches from the few classic mechanical watches produced at the time, which wouldn’t have been caught dead in red.

That’s all changed. The makers of mechanical watches have not only claimed the color wheel as their own, they have moved beyond pink straps or lavender tinted dials to color-infused case materials. Neon-colored dial plates, anodized bridges, rainbow gem details and vibrant enameling have developed over the years, giving models a blast of intense and edgy color.

Hublot was one of the first brands to put colorful rubber straps on luxury watches and one of the first to offer ceramic watches in colors beyond white and black (it has done red, yellow, blue and orange). It was also one of the first to make a case entirely of transparent sapphire crystal: in red, orange, yellow and, this year, purple (in the Hublot Spirit of Big Bang Tourbillon Purple Sapphire, $206,000).

“We are one of the youngest luxury watch brands, so we don’t have an archive of vintage styles to reissue,” said Ricardo Guadalupe, the brand’s chief executive, referring to Hublot’s 1980 founding. “But we do have a history of producing colorful watches, and this is the way we differentiate ourselves. That led to our creation of innovative case materials. We’ve been doing ceramic cases since 2005, and sapphire since 2016. And this year we came out with Saxem, a sapphire alloyed with minerals, to create a neon yellow case.”

Who wears these colorful watches? “Well, it’s not your first watch,” Mr. Guadalupe said. “It takes courage to wear neon.”

Gems Galore

There is nothing like diamonds, emeralds or rubies to add intrinsic value to a watch. If you take apart a gem-set watch, you end up with a pile of precious stones that are valuable in their own right; take apart a tourbillon and you have a pile of metal components.

Gem setting, in fact, sometimes constitutes the only reason a so-called ladies’ watch has any resale value at all, especially if the model lacks complications or was not made by one of the big names.

Renewed interest in jewel-accented timepieces among both men and women has led watch companies to rethink their setting techniques, with the goal being to enhance brilliance — the industry term for the light that comes out of the surface, or table, of a diamond.

For brilliance at its best, light must be able enter the sides and the lower half, or pavilion, of the stone. So, in jewelry, the raised prong setting is considered the best way to make a diamond glow. In watches, however, diamonds generally have been sunk into a metal case, which automatically blocks any light entering the lower half of the stone.

Recently, however, watch brands have found ways — mostly with modified claw or prong mounts — to admit light without risking a gem’s stability in its setting.

In Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Rendez-Vous Dazzling collection, the diamonds are set three different ways (in 18-karat pink gold and 168 diamonds totaling 3.43 carats, $54,000).

Those on the inner dial are sunk into the metal; the industry term is grain set. The diamonds on the inner row on the bezel are gripped by claws cut out of the metal base in what is called the descendu style. And the larger row of diamonds on the outer bezel are set into prongs attached to a metal belt that protects the gems and their settings from knocks. The prongs raise the gems slightly above the metal, allowing light to enter and shine through.

“The goal is to create more light return and therefore more brilliance,” said Catherine Rénier, the brand’s chief executive. “We wanted to raise the jewelry signature on this collection, and we think the prong setting created something unique, with permanent added value and a lot of style. It makes the diamonds more present.”

The New Rarity

One-offs and limited editions are rooted in the idea of exclusivity as a core element of modern luxury.

“When a watch is rare, it gives people confidence that it isn’t going to be mass-produced, and that creates an inherent desire to own it,” said Eric Wind, owner of the watch dealership Wind Vintage in Palm Beach, Fla. “It also assures them that secondary values will be higher than an unlimited or unnumbered piece.”

It may seem like more and more brands are producing watches that everyone wants yet almost no one can buy, but rarity is not just a cynical marketing ploy. Demand for many hand-finished watches has almost always outpaced production capacity.

Patek Philippe makes only 60,000 watches a year; Audemars Piguet, about 40,000. Smaller independent brands, whose creations are even more artisanal, may produce just a hundred or two. So anyone lucky enough to get one at retail also could be confident of getting a high resale price, sometimes even significantly more than the initial cost.

But flippers beware: Brands know where their watches go, and anyone who resells two weeks later probably has burned the relationship forever.

Another piece of the rarity puzzle is bespoke. “We’re seeing a lot more one-of-one pieces made by manufacturers for top clients,” Mr. Wind said. “Cartier has been doing unique commissions of Tank Cintrée and Crash models. We’ve even seen Patek Philippe doing a few unique commissions recently. People will pay huge premiums for that. The trouble is, they’re difficult to price on the pre-owned market because there’s only one of them.”

A final caveat: Just because something’s rare doesn’t mean it’s desirable or has investment value. So a newcomer to collecting has to do research and talk to vintage dealers to gain an understanding of the market. This is where connoisseurship comes in.

“There are many vintage models from the ’70s and ’80s, including some from top brands, that are incredibly rare, but no one really wants them or cares about them,” Mr. Wind said. “Even some Rolex models from the vintage era are extremely rare but not desirable.”