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Slightly offtopic warning from an addict: do not start looking into watches. Especially mechanical ones. Their beauty combined with their flaws puts people on t

Slightly offtopic warning from an addict: do not start looking into watches. Especially mechanical ones. Their beauty combined with their flaws puts people on the never ending, wallet destroying quest for the holy grail. And the diminishing returns from jumping from a "budget" watch of 3-500$ to a "nice" one of 2-3000$ are ridiculously small. Collecting mechanical watches is especially bad in these last couple of years because the prices have gone up by a lot with little to none technical advances to back it up. It looks to me like a ponzi scheme supported by the watch media (hodinkee in particular [0]) as they try to push watches as a sort of investment - which they are not it you actually wear them. The manufacturers put out one overpriced limited edition after another where the only thing that changes is the color scheme. There's a lot to talk about and I'm sure I didn't do a good job of presenting my case in such a short post, but at least keep this warning in the back of your head. [0] https://thetruthaboutwatches.com/2020/12/ben-clymer-hodinkee-valued-at-100m/ https://thetruthaboutwatches.com/2020/12/ben-clymer-hodinkee...

k_sze 6y ago
What I do is I make a list of vintage grail watches that I'm interested in, and I limit myself to those and stop looking at other ones. (Same thing with fountain pens.) Right now these are missing from my collection: - Seiko SCVF-009 "Red Alpinist" with green dial - I already have the cream dial (SCVF-007) and the black dial (SCVF-005) counterparts. - Citizen 67-9356 Octagon chronograph, in both white dial and black dial configurations; I find this one interesting because it was like the only inexpensive hi-beat (28,800 bph) chronograph, complete with day-date and flyback mechanism, ever produced in the history of Japanese watch-making. - Grand Seiko 6186-8000 VFA, in both blue-dial-and-long-hands, and white-dial-and-short-hands configurations. A ridiculously accurate Grand Seiko with a dial design that (I find) really stands the tests of time. Legend has it that the Seikos performed so well that the Swiss eventually gave up inviting them to the chronometer competition (because Seikos kept coming out at the top). I consider this model the pinnacle before Seiko resorted to "cheating" with the SpringDrive. Curiously, I'm not really interested in Swiss watches.
- coldtea 6y ago
  >Curiously, I'm not really interested in Swiss watches. I think having a list of "vintage grail watches" you just "need to have" is more curious than that :)
  - k_sze 6y ago
    Oh, I don’t actually “need” to have them. They are just nice-to-haves. Really low priority among my “Ways to Spend/Waste My Money”, more like “Doodads I Might Buy One Day If I Have Waaay Too Much Money”. Establishing this list at least ultimately caps how much money I’ll waste in a certain kind of things. In contrast, I’m unable to establish such a list about books and video games. At this point I don’t even know how much money I’ve spent buying my hundreds of books and hundreds of games (although “fortunately”, the vast majority of them were bought at heavy discount).
Faaak 6y ago
My two and only mechanical watches are Seiko ones, worth 50$ on amazon. They're so cheap yet so good compared to a digital one. And indeed, you can easily fall into this trap of buying a never-good-enough better one.
- aikinai 6y ago
  Honest question, what’s “so good” compares to non-mechanical watches? By “digital,” I assume you really mean quartz?
stevekemp 6y ago
People can become addicted to anything, I think being addicted to buying watches has got to be a less common than shoes, cameras/lenses, handbags, sneakers, or even sunglasses! In some ways you're right, there are brands out there that put out short-lived special editions. But equally there are a lot of cheap and readily available pieces which are becoming much more well-known and accessible. All my watches have been bought used, and if ever I reach a point where one of them no longer makes me smile when I look at it then it will be resold. Sometimes watches appreciate in value, but it is a gamble and I think suggesting somebody buy a watch as an investment has got to be bad advice almost 100% of the time. If they go up, great? If they go down? Well if you enjoyed it for the time you owned it that shouldn't matter so much
coldtea 6y ago
>And the diminishing returns from jumping from a "budget" watch of 3-500$ to a "nice" one of 2-3000$ are ridiculously small. When it comes to keeping time, potentially underwater, etc, there are no extra returns, diminishing or not, functionality-wise to going from a $300 to a $3000. A $80 G-Force will do all of that and better. Now, if we include "sociatal value" (seen as rich, sophisticated) there are also not much returns from going above $300. At that level people wont know what you wear and wont care. If you want to make an impression to those who do know, and can tell, you'll need to go above $10000. And if you have that kind of money, you probably don't need to make an impression.
- lm28469 6y ago
  > At that level people wont know what you wear and wont care. A friend of mine got a watch for his birthday (or Christmas I don't remember), he showed it to me and I told him: "Oh nice, it has a transparent back to display the 'automatic' mechanism, just like my $60 swatch from the 80s" Turns out his watch costs more than $4k... You're so right, unless you're in a social circle who knows as much as you do about watches, you can have a $30 copy or a $30k original, it doesn't really matter, all people will see is "a nice watch"
  - JohnBooty 6y ago
    A friend of mine got a watch for his birthday (or Christmas I don't remember), he showed it to me and I told him: "Oh nice, it has a transparent back to display the 'automatic' mechanism, just like my $60 swatch from the 80s" Your $60 Swatch had a battery-powered quartz movement which was a lot simpler than whatever he was showing you. That's not to say one's better than the other. Most of my watches are quartz. Quartz powered watches are something of a modern miracle and are more accurate than any mechanical watch. But, why did you feel the need to rain on your friend's parade? Mechanical watches are really fascinating little machines.
  - JohnBooty 6y ago
    A friend of mine got a watch for his birthday (or Christmas I don't remember), he showed it to me and I told him: "Oh nice, it has a transparent back to display the 'automatic' mechanism, just like my $60 swatch from the 80s" Your $60 Swatch had a battery-powered quartz movement which was a lot simpler than whatever he was showing you. That's not to say one's better than the other. Most of my watches are quartz. Quartz powered watches are something of a modern miracle and are more accurate than any mechanical watch. But, why did you feel the need to rain on your friend's parade? Mechanical watches are really fascinating little machines and some people find them really enjoyable.
JohnBooty 6y ago
It's all true. Although, there are vastly divergent ways to tackle this hobby. Lots of people focus on cheap quartz watches and affordable mechanicals from Seiko and the like. Personally, I am head over heels for Casio as well. You can have a great Casio collection (MDV-106 Duro, G-Shock, A168) for under $100. Casio has sold their original black G-Shock virtually unchanged for decades; you can pick one up for $45 at Amazon or WalMart and a lot of folks consider that watch as important as anything Rolex has ever done. While I admittedly was quickly "addicted" to watches, climbing the ladder of luxury watches held zero interest to me. It was just so obvious to me from the beginning: you can literally spend as much as you want and you'll never be happy. Cars, hi-fi gear, it all works that way. Their beauty combined with their flaws puts people on the never ending, wallet destroying quest for the holy grail. And the diminishing returns from jumping from a "budget" watch of 3-500$ to a "nice" one of 2-3000$ are ridiculously small. I never felt this pressure, but many do. The nice thing about this hobby is that nobody gives a shit what you're wearing. The average person just sees that you're wearing a watch, unless you're wearing something super gaudy. Watch people... well, they're kind of like car people. The prices for truly top-end stuff are so astronomical that nobody can afford it anyway, so folks just focus on little niches that interest them. Your average car nut has a collection that is more "quirky" and "surprising bang for the buck" than "this is the ultimate car, bow down to me." Similar with watches: it's generally not like a pecking order where people with $5000 watches look down on people with $500 watches. People who really like this stuff tend to just appreciate cool watches, whatever "cool" means to them.
piva00 6y ago
This push for watches feel eerily similar to the push of diamonds (or gem stones) towards women. As with any luxury item you need to create demand somehow. Watches are considered "men's jewelry" so I think there is something ongoing in the jewelry industry, either a hop to find new markets as the women's one might be saturated for a while (I think in the same sense of the tobacco industry targeting women through the 1920s to 1960s, men were captured early on so the female demographics was a huge untapped market). I feel that some friends the past 5 years have started more and more to talk about mechanical watches, it definitely feels like an artificial demand pushed by marketing.
- JohnBooty 6y ago
  I feel that some friends the past 5 years have started more and more to talk about mechanical watches, it definitely feels like an artificial demand pushed by marketing. I've noticed it a bit too. All of us are more influenced by marketing than we'd like to admit and certainly more than we realize. No arguments there. However, it's not like I've seen any sort of marketing push for mechanical watches. I just don't see any marketing for them whatsoever. The question for me is, is it because the marketing situation has changed? Or is it because watches are kind of an "old guy" thing and we're all five years older than we were five years ago? Personally I feel it's the latter. But, I can think of two indirect possibilities from the marketing side of things. 1. There has been kind of a marketing push from newcomers like Daniel Wellington and MVMT on Instagram. That's all overpriced trashy quartz stuff. But, I suppose it gets people thinking about watches. 2. Much like the rise of Starbucks got a lot of new people thinking about coffee 20 years ago, I think the success of smart watches got a lot of new people thinking about watches.

k_sze 6y ago

What I do is I make a list of vintage grail watches that I'm interested in, and I limit myself to those and stop looking at other ones. (Same thing with fountain pens.) Right now these are missing from my collection: - Seiko SCVF-009 "Red Alpinist" with green dial - I already have the cream dial (SCVF-007) and the black dial (SCVF-005) counterparts. - Citizen 67-9356 Octagon chronograph, in both white dial and black dial configurations; I find this one interesting because it was like the only inexpensive hi-beat (28,800 bph) chronograph, complete with day-date and flyback mechanism, ever produced in the history of Japanese watch-making. - Grand Seiko 6186-8000 VFA, in both blue-dial-and-long-hands, and white-dial-and-short-hands configurations. A ridiculously accurate Grand Seiko with a dial design that (I find) really stands the tests of time. Legend has it that the Seikos performed so well that the Swiss eventually gave up inviting them to the chronometer competition (because Seikos kept coming out at the top). I consider this model the pinnacle before Seiko resorted to "cheating" with the SpringDrive. Curiously, I'm not really interested in Swiss watches.

coldtea 6y ago
>Curiously, I'm not really interested in Swiss watches. I think having a list of "vintage grail watches" you just "need to have" is more curious than that :)
- k_sze 6y ago
  Oh, I don’t actually “need” to have them. They are just nice-to-haves. Really low priority among my “Ways to Spend/Waste My Money”, more like “Doodads I Might Buy One Day If I Have Waaay Too Much Money”. Establishing this list at least ultimately caps how much money I’ll waste in a certain kind of things. In contrast, I’m unable to establish such a list about books and video games. At this point I don’t even know how much money I’ve spent buying my hundreds of books and hundreds of games (although “fortunately”, the vast majority of them were bought at heavy discount).

Faaak 6y ago

My two and only mechanical watches are Seiko ones, worth 50$ on amazon. They're so cheap yet so good compared to a digital one. And indeed, you can easily fall into this trap of buying a never-good-enough better one.

aikinai 6y ago
Honest question, what’s “so good” compares to non-mechanical watches? By “digital,” I assume you really mean quartz?

stevekemp 6y ago

People can become addicted to anything, I think being addicted to buying watches has got to be a less common than shoes, cameras/lenses, handbags, sneakers, or even sunglasses! In some ways you're right, there are brands out there that put out short-lived special editions. But equally there are a lot of cheap and readily available pieces which are becoming much more well-known and accessible. All my watches have been bought used, and if ever I reach a point where one of them no longer makes me smile when I look at it then it will be resold. Sometimes watches appreciate in value, but it is a gamble and I think suggesting somebody buy a watch as an investment has got to be bad advice almost 100% of the time. If they go up, great? If they go down? Well if you enjoyed it for the time you owned it that shouldn't matter so much

coldtea 6y ago

>And the diminishing returns from jumping from a "budget" watch of 3-500$ to a "nice" one of 2-3000$ are ridiculously small. When it comes to keeping time, potentially underwater, etc, there are no extra returns, diminishing or not, functionality-wise to going from a $300 to a $3000. A $80 G-Force will do all of that and better. Now, if we include "sociatal value" (seen as rich, sophisticated) there are also not much returns from going above $300. At that level people wont know what you wear and wont care. If you want to make an impression to those who do know, and can tell, you'll need to go above $10000. And if you have that kind of money, you probably don't need to make an impression.

lm28469 6y ago
> At that level people wont know what you wear and wont care. A friend of mine got a watch for his birthday (or Christmas I don't remember), he showed it to me and I told him: "Oh nice, it has a transparent back to display the 'automatic' mechanism, just like my $60 swatch from the 80s" Turns out his watch costs more than $4k... You're so right, unless you're in a social circle who knows as much as you do about watches, you can have a $30 copy or a $30k original, it doesn't really matter, all people will see is "a nice watch"
- JohnBooty 6y ago
  A friend of mine got a watch for his birthday (or Christmas I don't remember), he showed it to me and I told him: "Oh nice, it has a transparent back to display the 'automatic' mechanism, just like my $60 swatch from the 80s" Your $60 Swatch had a battery-powered quartz movement which was a lot simpler than whatever he was showing you. That's not to say one's better than the other. Most of my watches are quartz. Quartz powered watches are something of a modern miracle and are more accurate than any mechanical watch. But, why did you feel the need to rain on your friend's parade? Mechanical watches are really fascinating little machines.
- JohnBooty 6y ago
  A friend of mine got a watch for his birthday (or Christmas I don't remember), he showed it to me and I told him: "Oh nice, it has a transparent back to display the 'automatic' mechanism, just like my $60 swatch from the 80s" Your $60 Swatch had a battery-powered quartz movement which was a lot simpler than whatever he was showing you. That's not to say one's better than the other. Most of my watches are quartz. Quartz powered watches are something of a modern miracle and are more accurate than any mechanical watch. But, why did you feel the need to rain on your friend's parade? Mechanical watches are really fascinating little machines and some people find them really enjoyable.

JohnBooty 6y ago

It's all true. Although, there are vastly divergent ways to tackle this hobby. Lots of people focus on cheap quartz watches and affordable mechanicals from Seiko and the like. Personally, I am head over heels for Casio as well. You can have a great Casio collection (MDV-106 Duro, G-Shock, A168) for under $100. Casio has sold their original black G-Shock virtually unchanged for decades; you can pick one up for $45 at Amazon or WalMart and a lot of folks consider that watch as important as anything Rolex has ever done. While I admittedly was quickly "addicted" to watches, climbing the ladder of luxury watches held zero interest to me. It was just so obvious to me from the beginning: you can literally spend as much as you want and you'll never be happy. Cars, hi-fi gear, it all works that way. Their beauty combined with their flaws puts people on the never ending, wallet destroying quest for the holy grail. And the diminishing returns from jumping from a "budget" watch of 3-500$ to a "nice" one of 2-3000$ are ridiculously small. I never felt this pressure, but many do. The nice thing about this hobby is that nobody gives a shit what you're wearing. The average person just sees that you're wearing a watch, unless you're wearing something super gaudy. Watch people... well, they're kind of like car people. The prices for truly top-end stuff are so astronomical that nobody can afford it anyway, so folks just focus on little niches that interest them. Your average car nut has a collection that is more "quirky" and "surprising bang for the buck" than "this is the ultimate car, bow down to me." Similar with watches: it's generally not like a pecking order where people with $5000 watches look down on people with $500 watches. People who really like this stuff tend to just appreciate cool watches, whatever "cool" means to them.

piva00 6y ago

This push for watches feel eerily similar to the push of diamonds (or gem stones) towards women. As with any luxury item you need to create demand somehow. Watches are considered "men's jewelry" so I think there is something ongoing in the jewelry industry, either a hop to find new markets as the women's one might be saturated for a while (I think in the same sense of the tobacco industry targeting women through the 1920s to 1960s, men were captured early on so the female demographics was a huge untapped market). I feel that some friends the past 5 years have started more and more to talk about mechanical watches, it definitely feels like an artificial demand pushed by marketing.

JohnBooty 6y ago
I feel that some friends the past 5 years have started more and more to talk about mechanical watches, it definitely feels like an artificial demand pushed by marketing. I've noticed it a bit too. All of us are more influenced by marketing than we'd like to admit and certainly more than we realize. No arguments there. However, it's not like I've seen any sort of marketing push for mechanical watches. I just don't see any marketing for them whatsoever. The question for me is, is it because the marketing situation has changed? Or is it because watches are kind of an "old guy" thing and we're all five years older than we were five years ago? Personally I feel it's the latter. But, I can think of two indirect possibilities from the marketing side of things. 1. There has been kind of a marketing push from newcomers like Daniel Wellington and MVMT on Instagram. That's all overpriced trashy quartz stuff. But, I suppose it gets people thinking about watches. 2. Much like the rise of Starbucks got a lot of new people thinking about coffee 20 years ago, I think the success of smart watches got a lot of new people thinking about watches.