The Dark Side of Watches

I don’t particularly care to shop for watches in person. I feel intimidated and pressured. I’m sure most of that stems from my introversion. But being in sales in my wine career, I learned to spot the indicators in a sales setting and it makes me feel uncomfortable. Buying a car is painful. Selling one is even more so. But shopping for luxury watches, in a high-toned watch or jewelry store, really gives me the creeps. I’m an introvert.

Thanks to Rolex, I came up with an alternative to trying watches on in person, store side. Rolex has “exhibition” watches in their AD stores and they are technically Rolex on the outside, but without movements and the parts that make time-telling vital. Still, one can go inside a store and “try” one on, get a feel for the watch. Now, buying one, that’s another story. But trying one on, easy enough.

But you have to walk into the store and go through all that mishegoss dance. I don’t want to do that, so I came up with my own plan.

The Eleventh Hour

Funny how time can slip into almost any topic, interpolating into the most mundane of subjects, tick, tick, tick. And so now, it seems we have slipped into the eleventh hour with this blog.

Watch out! (Or, what’s the deal with changing out watch straps?)

Young man looking up at Sistine Chapel, Rome, 1971

One of the most frustrating things about some watches is how they are near impossible to change out the bracelets or straps. I’ve been wrestling with a couple of watches lately, and it’s kind of turning me off to the watch world. OK, OK, first world problem. But it’s also a time issue. And seeing as watches are timepieces, the amount of time I must take to change out a strap should be a consideration, as much as what kind of movement the watch has, shouldn’t it? Anyway, here I am with two exceptional watches that do not want me to mess with their bracelets and straps.

A call out to the (analog) watch industry: You want to know why you are alienating your customer base and risk losing market share to Apple and the digital watch world?

I’ll give it to you straight. I’m new here. And I don’t have a lot of time. I have expendable income, but limited patience. I spent a career in sales, so I have absolutely no tolerance for bullshit.

So, when I saw a recent piece on Wrist Enthusiast, titled, “The Celebrities with the ‘Lefty’ Rolex GMT-Master II 126720 VTNR,” I got suckered into reading it. I am left-handed, left-handed watches are of interest to me. But what I read, and more importantly, saw, was a display of unrestrained hedonism and narcissistic drivel that was a Grade A Certified masterful waste of time.

The Last Time

One of the things a newbie will do, when they fall into the rabbit hole of watch collecting, is to fall in love with often disparate watches. For instance, I fell for the Bulgari Octo Finissimo Titanium watch. But I also really liked the Certina DS Action GMT, which cost a tenth of what the Bulgari did. My watch guru was real good about encouraging me to go for it when I mentioned the Bulgari, the Tudor and the Omega. But when I mentioned I was interested in the Certina, while he wasn’t discouraging (“Certina watches are well- known for precision, reliability and sporty character”), I could tell he wouldn’t be the one to recommend that watch to me. But he didn’t channel his inner Mick Jagger and recycle old song lyrics:

♫ Well I told you once and I told you twice
But ya never listen to my advice ♫

I noted his neutral stance. I realized he wasn’t recommending the watch, but he also wasn’t holding me back from buying it. If it was a mistake, it was something I had to learn on my own. In other words, he was being a good guru.

What time do you have?

How many times, over the years, has someone, out of the blue, come up to you and asked “Do you have the time?” (or was it a dime?) And, did you ever wonder if they were asking you just for the time? One little thing I have learned, in my short time as a watch enthusiast, is that this obsession with time and timepieces goes far beyond the instruments we wear on our wrists.

The Hands of Time

 

I recently realized that I have a fascination with the hands of watches. So much in fact that now it will probably influence how I buy watches in the future. Much like calibers, the hands express the care and precision a watchmaker puts into their creations.

I was looking at the time on one of my wrist watches the other day, and it hit me – Hey, I really like the hands on this watch! Conversely, other watches have hands that take a little getting used to. And oddly enough, for me, it doesn’t have to do with how much money the watch costs. I’m not going to get all geeky and technical about this. There is a good piece about watch hands on Unwound, Crown and Caliber’s watch blog, called The Nicknames of Watch Hands. It covers the technical part pretty well.

Really, what I am drawn to is the esthetic side of the design of watch hands. Some are delicate, some are brawny. Some are whimsical and some are all business.

The “Go Everywhere” Watch

The French Riviera in the summer of '85

During a leisurely lunch with my watch loving friend, the notion of the “go everywhere” timepiece surfaced. “A watch like X, you can take anywhere. Swimming in the Mediterranean, showering, the sauna. Even lovemaking.” Wait. What? Lovemaking? “Whatever happened to being naked?” I queried.

“Well, you are naked. You’re just wearing a watch, for Chrissake.” My friend defines nudity differently than I do. None the less, I saw his point. And so, I asked myself the burning horological question, “Is there a go everywhere watch?”

The “One and Only” Wine Test for Watch Getting

I came from the wine trade, and before I fell into the horological rabbit hole, there was an exercise I would often do when I tried and liked a wine. It went like this: “Is this wine a wine I could live with, day in and day out, possibly even as the one and only wine I would ever enjoy, if I were stranded on some unreachable island in the middle of nowhere?”

The task at hand was to ferret out just how much I liked a particular wine. And in more than a few cases, there were wines that met the challenge. So, too, with watches, I’ve adopted that parlor game.

How My Wine Cellar Primed Me For Watch Collecting

During a lengthy career in the wine trade, I came into possession of a number of wines. Enough to fill a walk-in closet and then a stand-alone cooler. Not to mention various wines in closets and fridges. Some of these wines I’ve held onto for 30 years or longer. In that time, I’ve learned a few things about collecting, and about myself. So, when I started to acquire watches, I knew a little about collecting things.

Disclaimer: Collecting wine and collecting watches have some distinct differences. Namely, that wine is a consumable product, which once you open the bottle, it ceases to be part of a collection. Watches are more similar to art or coins or cars or anything that doesn’t have as short of a life span as wine, which is a living product and prone to mortality. Watches, as my first post noted, can be passed down to heirs. Wine can be too, but the clock is still ticking on every bottle of wine.