A $5000 Gold Apple Watch?

Apple watch is set to debut sometime in early 2015, Apple’s new smartwatch starts at $349, but how much does it cost if you want something a bit more high-end, like, say, the 18-karat pink- or yellow-gold version?

French Apple blog is claiming this week theyll run somewhere between $4,000 and $5,000. But $5,000 is actually a steal for an 18k gold watch. A quick perusal of Google Shopping reveals that full-18K luxury watches (not the merely gold-plated timepieces) tend to run upwards of $10,000, and can be as much as $30,000, though many of these watches use more gold than the Apple Watch will.

video

Ultimately, we wont know what the high-end Apple Watch will cost until Apple tells us. That said, that the $5,000 rumor is even remotely believable reveals who Apple is really targeting with the 18K gold Apple Watch Edition: The kinds of people who would spend on a watch roughly what I spent on my college degree. (Thanks, state school!) For the upper crust, $5,000 is a paltry sum compared to what theyre used to spending on timepieces.

If the gold Apple Watch Edition indeed retails for $5,000, itll be far from the most expensive device Apple sells. A fully-tricked out iMac With Retina 5K Display, packed with Apples creative editing software, costs $5,147.97.