BOOOORRRRIIINNNGG!!!
***
I finished writing this long-winded piece months back but I wanted to hold off on publishing it. I'd return to it and work for a bit, then abandon it again.
Half-way through I almost scrapped it entirely. It's a heavy duty examination of my desires---waxing and waning---as I obsessed over watches for a hot minute. I learned more than I needed to, I spent a few hundred dollars on gear, had up to seven working watches at once (until Cass broke one), and have nearly fifty bookmarks saved in a variety of folders (folder names include "Gimmick," "Microbrand," "Quartz" et al) as I eye what to spend money on next round, in maybe a year.
In the time I was writing this and the previous post, I had my "dynamic list" going as a doc. I had pictures of watches and associated notes, prices, movement types, whether or not bullshit level was achieved (an achievement level based on my own personal judgement of facts after Internet deep dives). It would go from a matrix of pictures and notes into prose musing, paragraphs where I tried to work out my thoughts, and back to a matrix, then back to prose. On and on it went, and I even printed it to show Cass, so he could get a glimpse of my brain working. It was eight pages long.
For anyone interested, there are two major online retailers that sell a wide variety of cheap quartz items---nearly any cartoon show you're interested in, Obama smoking a cigarette, Angela Davis speaking, some very explicit scenes---all for under forty bucks, and generally much cheaper. For those interested in self-winding, automatic watches: Alibaba Express and Temu offer many varieties for essentially the same price, if not far less. See? I know more than is necessary.
In then end, I got a watch I never want to take off, that I never want to wear anything else while it works, and this is a result that I didn't expect.
And, if you're not a horologist, or someone interested in the thought process for a specific type of consumer, this may be a bit boring.
***
I like my cars manual and my watches automatic...
Jeeze. I went from zero working watches to enough for a different watch each day of the week. I guess that's not the plan, exactly, but the fact remains: zero working watches to seven.
The three cheapo-quartz van Gogh watches all came in, and they're beautiful to look down at:
The first on the left, "Cafe at Night" is one of my favorite van Gogh paintings, and initially inspired me to make a purchase. I couldn't decide between it and the "Starry Night Over the Port at Arles" painting. In the end, I figured I could give one each to my kids, and went ahead and got the "Sunflowers" one for Camille, and thought I'd just keep the one that Cass didn't want between the other two.
But when I started wearing them, the Cafe one was quite difficult to read. The hands are gold colored and you need to hold it just right to get the light to glint off of them. The Port watch proved to be much easier to read, what with the background contrast working for the benefit to actually being able to read time. When I finally got to putting on the Sunflower watch, I was shocked by how easy it was to read. I thought, based on the Cafe watch, that it would be impossible, that the hands would be invisible. I was wrong---it may be easier to read than even the Port watch.
The bands, though, are the kind of leather that is stiff, the holes drilled for the buckle barely fit the prong, and they may not even be leather at all (despite the "100% Leather" stamp).
Ron's late Navy buddy's 60's era Seiko Weekdater finally got finished, and it is a very elegant thing to wear:
They call it a "Weekdater" because it has both the day of the month and the day of the week showing on the face. These are known as 'complications,' and fixing the day of the week is certainly complicated...maybe 'tedious' is a better term.
One thing people like about these watches is that the crown is recessed. The little doo-dah that you pull out to set the time? That guy is smooth with the bezel.
This watch has an automatic Seiko movement, was designed as a budget-conscious timepiece for a growing Japanese middle-class as well as overseas American service-members, and the fly-wheel is large enough to feel it as you move your wrist. (Automatic-watch folks will get what I mean.)
I had to buy a band with it, so I went with a nice black leather edition. It's amazing, the difference between a pricey band's quality and the competition.
So, then, we arrive at the culmination of all my research...
I was nearly set on going for a Tufina, a German brand that purports to make their automatic movements in-house. I was looking for automatic movement, the ability to be fixed, and a skeleton look (clear face so you can see the movement). There were some reasonably priced Tufina versions out there that met the criteria. This is where the deep Reddit dives got serious.
In the end, it comes down to what you really want. Do you want to spend the money necessary to get luxury item, a working piece of jewelry, a reputable name brand that you know can be serviced easily? (My personal answer for that: I was mostly not willing to spend what it would take.)
It turned out that since the Tufina watches sounded too good to be true, they mostly were too good to be true. The in-house, made-in-Germany movements were actually "reassembled" in Germany of questionable quality Chinese movements; reports were that customer service tends towards lacking, and servicing the movements is only a tiny step above my wooden watch.
(Sigh) So, Tufina was out. (Remembering the adage: Don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining.) It was around here that figured I'd either go for a nifty Swatch automatic or maybe even go for a former-Soviet Vostok. The Vostoks are nice, in that they're durable and have Cyrillic writing on their faces, but the tend towards unreliable and need servicing regularly. At least they could be serviced?
After a while, I learned that what the Swatch automatics had going for them---movements designed, created, and assembled by machines---made them essentially disposable, since they couldn't be worked on as that was never part of the plan.
This is where burnout was nearly achieved. As I started to washout, I learned about the Seiko 5 offerings. Seiko brand had a bunch of automatic styles under the Seiko 5 moniker, all priced extremely competitively (like, close to $100, above and below). They can be serviced, they'll run forever, they're well known and respectable. I nearly bought one immediately. But...
...but I was already going to have a Seiko automatic watch (it hadn't been fixed yet, but it was real and nearly in my possession).
Eventually I settled on one of the microbrands that populate the watch market. They advertise to folks like me---on the low-end of purchasing power for the fancy-stuff, people not always willing to spend over a thousand bucks (or even $500) but want a fancy-ish automatic watch that can be serviced in ways my wooden watch couldn't be. These microbrands also specify where their automatic movements originated, instead of claiming they make them in-house.
I went with the brand Islander, a house-brand of a premium watch seller on Long Island. Oddly enough, the Reddit community had mostly positive things to say about them. I can attest that this was rare. Reddit can get really dark, but here they were nearly unanimously positive. One of the few complaints was that their logo was lame. I didn't feel that, since, well, check it out:
It's always 4:20. How can you be upset with that?
I circled around, and then settled on, the GMT Melville with the stainless steel bracelet, opting to switch out the leather band that came with it:
It's beautiful and easy to read, glows on the dark, and since I set the second time-zone hour hand to Paris-Berlin-Rome-Vienna-Prague time, I'll always be connected to western Europe.
But then I started looking at crazy, novelty quartz entries. Why not? If so many of the automatic movements are destined to fail and be thrown out anyway, why not pick some weirdo quartz options you like, some that look nice, and buy any cheap novelty deal that tickles your fancy to round out the collection?
One of the first I settled on was the following Bob's Burgers watch:
While the strap looks like the strap from the Seiko Sea Lion Weekdater above, it is very different. It feels like vinyl and the buckle struggles to get around the band and the prong struggles to fit in the hole, but it is a fun and silly entry that shows off my love for this animated program.
The last watch that I got and that arrived was another quartz novelty-style:
Frank at work. It's pretty cool, but this photo makes the hands look legible, whereas in practice, they're kinda not. The band is silicone, which is a fancy name for new-rubber.
And...since I got the van Goghs, I've been letting the kids wear them. We had our first casualty while I was in Texas. The "Cafe at Night" was the first to bite it. Cass was doing Cass things, and hit it hard enough against the wall to shatter the glass. The quartz mechanism also seems to have stopped working.
Camille has claimed and wears often the Sunflowers van Gogh watch, and Cass wears the Port one more often than his sister with the Sunflowers. The Zappa watch is nearly impossible to read, and the old Seiko has no winding part of its crown. That means that wearing it is the only thing that keeps it alive. Since changing the day of the week is obnoxious for my big fingers, once it's died I let it sit for a week and try to set the time and date once the day is correct. But really, my commitment to wearing it is low. Cass has his eyes on it, which I think is rad, and I'm going to give it to him. I just want to make sure he won't do Cass things and shatter it's dome. Plus, I have my blue and silver beauty.
I wear the Bob's Burgers to the beach.
***
The Islander Melville GMT with the stainless steel bracelet is my current go-to. I love this watch. It's a dive watch, and that means a specific thing. My spelunking the depths of watch-etiquette sites and watch-type sites led me to a few bullet-pointed lists that are useful frameworks or guides on like-minded adventures.
One is about the types of analog watches that are out there in the market, and the other was about the kinds of brands on offer for the budget-minded automatic-watch shopper. Both were helpful in their own way.
The first---Types of Analog Watches:
They each developed due to different kinds of specific constraints, and each retain some of those idiosyncrasies common to their forbears (rugged, smallish-yet-easy-to-read field watches for the soldier on the go in the trenches of Europe; stopwatches built in to race watches; sturdy seals and pressure locks for dive watches et al). Interesting list and food for further inquiry.
Second---Types of Brands for Automatic watches:
- Lower-tier Swiss brands (Swatch, Tissot...)
- Mid-tier Japanese brands (Seiko, Citizen...)
- Upper-tier Chinese brands (Seagull, Cadisen...)
The approach of looking at major brands in those tiers will yield a few results, namely affordable and reliable gear, no batteries necessary, ever.
Balancing those two lists with affordable microbrand searches is what lead me to my Melville.
I might as well finish with a small list of affordable microbrands, and the type of watch for each that caught my eye:
Within each of those brands one can find that type of watch mentioned parenthetically for under $500, with each movement being a respectable brand, typically either a Swiss movement or a Seiko.
Anyway...so much wasted energy on capitalistic shenanigans, on desires and on outfitting my wrist with time-telling jewelry.
