Who buys a $10,000 watch these days?

After hitting $4 billion in 2007 and then dropping to $2.6 million by 2009, US sales of watches that cost $1,000 and up are on the rebound. They reached $3 billion in 2011, according to the LGI Network, a division of the NPD Group market research firm.

In Boston, Shreve, Crump & Low has tripled its watch inventory as part its recent move to Newbury Street. It’s an almost $7 million collection made up of brands so pricey that some cost more than the average sedan.

Never mind that some people see such watches as examples of gross excess. Or that most Americans experience high-end watches only in glossy ads, where photos show men who look like Don Draper of “Mad Men” and the high-performance timepieces their work requires: deep-sea diving or piloting a biplane.

Despite the rocky economy, spending on luxury goods has been growing at a faster rate than overall retail spending, according to MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse. Plenty of people still want and can afford a timepiece that has less to do with telling time than making a statement.

Prices for luxury watches start around $1,000 and go as high as six figures (there are million-dollar watches, but they are rare). A smart collector can buy watches that not only make good heirlooms but also, particularly with rare models, can make good investments, said Shreve vice president Michael Groffenberger.

The luxury watch business caters mainly to men, and recently, Gregory Brown, 38, an owner of Prod4ever, a digital think-tank in Boston, was at Shreve’s with a hankering for a sports watch. The sales team was dressed to a high gleam and smiling, and Brown, a man whose family has its own crest, was wearing what’s best described as “watch-enthusiast casual”: jeans, sneakers, button down shirt, and an $8,000 Reverso by the Swiss watchmaker Jaeger LeCoultre.

Many luxury watch devotees don’t confine themselves to one. Leonardo Solis, 43, of Needham, describes himself as a “watchaholic” who buys and trades in luxury watches at least twice a month at the European Watch Co., on Newbury Street.

Ernie Boch Jr., the car magnate and chief executive of Norwood’s Boch Enterprises, has 40 watches in his collection and says he looks for a watch with “a story.” Indeed, his most recent purchase, a $9,000 Swiss-made Artya, has a face made of 65-million-year-old dinosaur dung. Another has a dial that contains actual moon dust, and a strap partly woven with fibers from an International Space Station suit. His “Insanity” watch, by Pierre Kunz, is so complicated that it requires a tutorial. “Unless you know the formula, you can’t tell the time,” said Boch, pleased.

Meanwhile, as nice looking as most high-end watches are, as many a female fashionista knows, sometimes one has to suffer for beauty. Or, as Rasheed Walton, of Foxborough and Fort Lauderdale, said of his 2.5 pound Breitling Bentley, “You definitely notice it on your wrist.” The $16,000 customized watch is slightly heavier than an 11-inch MacBook Air.“Every once in a while,” he acknowledged, “I have to take it off.”

But as the chief executive of Genius Advertising, Walton says he needs to look a certain way. “You can’t walk into someone’s business and tell them I can make your business more successful if you don’t look successful.”

But it’s not a look everyone likes. In fact, a high-end watch can send precisely the wrong message.

That was the case in Russia in April, when a scandal erupted over a picture of Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill sitting at a glossy table wearing a $30,000 Breguet watch. When it drew criticism, the photo was altered to remove the watch — a move that sparked more controversy, because although the watch was gone, its reflection in the shiny table remained visible. (The church later restored the original photo showing it on his wrist.)

That same month, then-President Nicolas Sarkozy of France was spotted slipping off his very expensive watch — a $70,000 Patek Philippe — before greeting supporters, a move that generated unflattering online comments and news stories about his alleged fear that that it would be stolen.

Closer to home, with a disappointing jobs report in May, the watches offend, too.

“If you have that level of wealth, you should start a scholarship fund,” said Matthew DiStasio, 49, a salesman at Bernie & Phyls in Saugus. “There are better things you could do with that money.”

So in reality, when purchasing a watch, you should go in with the mindset that you are not only buying a watch, but you are buying an investment.