Why do people buy expensive watches?

This is an updated version to an answer I wrote on Quora some year back.

Some asked why people buy overpriced watches and what's wrong with a simple Casio? Here is my answer:

There is nothing wrong with a simple Casio and in fact, the popularity of the simple Casio F-91W is an indication that many people still use the watch for utilitarian purposes - to tell time.

However, for many people a watch is more than just a tool for telling time, it is something that represents their personality. For them, it is a fashion accessory. They wear a watch as a fashion accessory. Something that goes with their outfit, something that enhances their overall look. They often have watches in different colours and materials to match the OTDs.Many have multiple watches - some which they wear to work, others for more formal occasions, others for sports and so on.

I know of people who save up and spend thousands of dollars on a watch which is several times their monthly salary. It may be a reward to themselves for something they accomplished - to remember an important occasion. For example, I bought myself an expensive watch when I got promoted.

Others use the watch as a status symbol, to show off: “Look at me! I am wearing a really expensive watch!" The thought that you have something that not everybody has, is quite appealing to a number of people. It can be a signal of who you are and what you have achieved in life.

On the other hand, I know several people - the so-called "watch nerds", who choose certain brands, which are quite expensive, because of the quality that goes into the making of the watch. This includes the materials used, the complications. They love the engineering and art that goes into the wristwatches, the overall quality - not just the movements but the polishing, the decorations on the movements which others can't see and even the straps. They also celebrate the heritage of the brands as well - waiting and searching for that rare grail watch, for which they are willing to spend thousands of dollars

In conclusion, there are numerous reasons why many people buy expensive watches.

Why did you buy your expensive watch?

Seiko SNKN01K1 watch unboxing

Note: This article was previously posted on Adamok.net on 01/01/2016.

Wishing all visitors to my blog a very Happy and Prosperous New Year 2016. 2015 was a busy and eventful year for me and I did not even have time to update the blog regularly. As the year came to a close, I decided to reward myself with a watch. If you are a regular to our blog, you are probably aware that I mostly blog about awesome yet affordable watches and I put myself a very low budget of around RM1000 (approx. US$232 / £158 at the current exchange rate).

The condition was that it had to be a mechanical/ automatic watch. I went to Lazada, my favourite shopping portal here in Malaysia and pulled up all the watches I had put on my watch list. All the Swiss brands were beyond my budget and I narrowed my choice down to two - a dressy Orient Bambino CER2400/ CER24005W/ ER24005W (at a discounted RM599 with free delivery) and the retro inspired Seiko Recraft SNKN01K1 (RM539). I already have a Tissot which I usually wear to formal occasions and I did not really need another dress watch.

Orient Bambino

So I finally decided to go for the SNKN01 - a watch I could wear everyday. The delivery was very fast - I bought it on the 26th and it was delivered on the 30th.

The SNKN01 is powered by a self-winding movement (7S26 movement with 21 Jewels, runs at 21,600 vibrations per hour) housed in the retro style stainless steel case with calf leather strap.

It has a screwdown see-through caseback. The watch is water resistant to 50M.

The sunburst dial with clear hour markers was what really attracted me to the watch with the day/date window at the hour 3 marker.

Though I love the new watch and I have been wearing it continuously for nearly a week now, it could have been better. First of all, the watch is not lumed - not the hour markers nor the hands, which means that I cannot read it in the dark. Further more it cannot be wound up and it does not hack (i.e., the second hand does not stop when you adjust the time). Seiko has other movements and I wonder why they used the 7S26 instead of say the 4R36 which does hack and can be hand wound. I answer would be that it would not cost only RM539 anymore.

Some of you may be wondering why having these features are important but for a lot of watch collectors, these are absolutely essential when they look for an automatic watch. I am not that concerned. The 7S26 reportedly has a power reserve of 40 hours when fully wound and I guess I will have to shake it a bit eveyday even when I am not wearing it. Or maybe I could get a watch winder.

Here is the unboxing video:

Why I like vintage watches?

This was a question in Quora which made me think about the watches I collect.

I cannot really explain but there is a certain charm about old watches - even the cheaper ones. It depends on your taste but I like the hand winding steel watches with doomed plastic crystals. I also like the unique and eccentric watches like the Tissot stone watches and brands that do not exist anymore like Favre Leuba and old Indian HMT watches. I like reading about their history and sometimes wonder about the guy who once used the watch to tell time.

When I was a kid, my father used to wear a cheap solar powered Bular watch and I really liked it. It is now in my collection with the crystal all cracked but I really like it because of the sentimental value.

I have also noticed that there is a nostalgia among people for everything vintage or classic and have noticed the classic Casio gold digital watches on the wrists of a number of stylish millennials. Of course, the watchmakers have realised this phenomenon and many including Seiko, Omega, Tudor, Tag Heur among others have all recently reintroduced many of their old designs, of course with a modern take.

Coming back to the question, different people like vintage watches for different reasons. Many collect them as investments, some collect them for aesthetic reasons, others for sentimental reasons, etc.

Advice on buying watches below $500

As some of my close friends and family members are aware, I am a big fan of watches - mechanical or battery powered, analog or digital, it does not matter. A lot of people also come to me for advice on buying watches and most are interested in good quality affordable watches. And of course I depend on the various watch blogs and forums out there, besides advice from some knowledgeable friends who are also watch fanatics. Some of the sites I frequent includes the famous A blog to watch, Hodinkee and the Watchuseek forums.

Recently I found out about another watch blog called Watchjudge.com. Rob has written a post called 'Best Watch Brands under $500: Affordable Timepieces Made with Actual Craftsmanship'. I found the article to be well written and quite balanced. Some actual good advice. So if you are looking for an affordable watch, I suggest you go through the article before buying one. 

Vintage Swiss Army ladies watch

This is one of my eBay bargain finds.

It is a vintage Swiss Army watch. I am not sure about the model but it is a ladies quartz watch. Found out that it has been discontinued by VICTORINOX, owner of the Swiss Army brand. Looking at various websites, I estimate that it from sometime back in the 70s.

When I bought it on eBay it did not have a strap, the crystal was badly scratched and it was not even running. Opening up the rear of the watch was extremely tough and I can see from the scratches on the back that previous owners had faced the same issue.

I finally got it opened and changed the batteries and found out that the watch works fine - keeping perfect time. That's Swiss quality for you.

I then polished the mineral glass crystal and realised that the lume on the watch is really good. Even brighter than most of the newer watches I have.

I then bought a Nato strap on eBay. It was ideal for my wife but she did not really like the watch. My daughter asked if she could have it but the strap was too big for her. Searching further, I finally found an eBay seller in the US who sold replica straps which look exactly like the original. This is the 14mm Gilden Swiss Army Style Nylon & Leather ladies watch band (US $ 20.48 with postage).

Looks great.

Replacing my Swatch watch strap

A couple of weeks back, I posted about the easiest way to upgrade the look of your watch - by changing the strap.

Well, why stop at that.

The old aluminium strap on my old Swatch Irony Chrono watch was showing it's age and I decided that it needed a nice new strap.

I had a nice new black leather strap but the problem is that replacing straps on Swatch watches is not straightforward because of their unique and proprietary 3-prong lug design.

So I decided to modify the strap to fit the watch lugs. I used the original strap as a template and cut away the necessary pieces of leather from the strap using my sharp Stanley knife.

I was confident that it would work and it did - a perfect fit.

Tired of your old watch: Change the strap

Unlike some crazy watch collectors who have several watches, most people normally have one beater watch which they wear everyday. Many don't even use a watch any more. However, if you do wear watches, there is an easy way to change the look and feel immediately : just by changing the strap. All you need is a new strap and some tools.

That's what I did with my old Sekonda watch. It is a Rolex GMT Master homage with a Pepsi (blue and red) bezel powered by a Miyota quartz movement. 

I bought a blue, red and white Nato strap - Royal Air Force colours, on eBay. I hoped that it would match the colours of the Pepsi bezel. Used the strap spring bar remover tool to remove the strap pins and replaced the bracelet with the new strap.

Now I have a watch that looks and feels totally different. The Nato strap feel much more comfortable as compared to the stainless steel bracelet.

What do you think?

Swatch Irony Filamento Multicolore ladies watch

This nice Swatch Irony Aluminium FILAMENTO MULTICOLORE REF. YSS1006 ladies watch is from their 2004 Spring/Summer collection.

The name comes from it's unique strap made up of seven different coloured leather straps with a metal jewellery clasp. The strap is attached to an aluminium case and bezel. The bezel frames the silver coloured sunbrushed dial. The numbers are absent; Instead there are colourful indices. Silver hour and minute hands show the time.

The aluminium case measures  Ø 25mm T : 8mm H : 28.7mm. The watch is water resistant to 3 bar or 30m.

The quartz watch is available on the Swatch site for £57.00
The watch uses the 377 (SR626SW) batteries.

Swatch Irony Chrono - Freezing Rain

Here is my latest eBay find - a vintage Swatch watch from their Spring/summer 2000 collection, which means that this watch is more than 13 years old. Wonder what I was doing then?

Anyway, this is from the Swatch Irony Chrono series and the model is called Freezing Rain (YCS4006AG). It was priced at £120.42 when it came out. I found out that it is quite hard to find now  but I bought it dirt cheap and I am too ashamed to mention the price here.

Did I say "dirt cheap" - I am not sure where the seller found it but it was covered with muck and it took me a lot of elbow grease plus soap and water to get rid of the dirt stuck in the various crevices.  The watch also had some bad scratches on the plastic crystal and did not work when I received it.

The watch case as well as the wrist band is made of aluminium and very light weight at only 62 gms. The watch case has a width of 40mm and is 12.5mm thick.

It is powered by a quartz ETA movement with a date at the 4 o clock position on the dial.

A change of batteries revealed that the watch did work but there was some problem with the chronograph function - it did start and stop but could not be reset (back to 0). I wanted to open up the case but discovered a major drawback of Swatch watches - opening up Swatch watches is a major project involving breaking the crystal and the crown as well. Quite annoying but I guess I would have to live with the malfunctioning chronograph.

I used Polywatch scratch remover to polish off the scratches on the crystal and apart from some tiny pit marks which are bit too deep, the crystal looks great.

I am quite impressed with the quality of images as well - they were taken using my Nokia Lumia 900 using the Macro mode.

Changing batteries on my daughter's Casio MQ-24 watch

The battery on my daughters's first watch which I bought for her on Amazon, has run out. There was no point in changing the battery really. She was ready to move on from her first watch.

My daughter knows what she wants in a watch, or more specifically what "she does not want":
1. An analog and not a digital watch.
2. Clear legible numbers - no dots and not Roman numerals.
3. Not a baby watch with cartoons.

ideally, I would love to give her a Baby G but decided to shop around.

So after searching on my favourite site - eBay, I came across an "almost new" Casio watch that fits the bill perfectly - a Casio MQ24 1330 ladies watch with a pink dial. Though she says she does not like pink, she was delighted when she got the watch.

 That was almost one year ago and the battery ran out. Normally, we would chuck out the old watch and shop around for a new one but I have become more eco-friendly over the years and realise that changing the battery on watches is not such a big deal. However, opening up the back was more trickier than I thought. I found the solution after a quick search on the net.

Bought 5 batteries - Sony Silver 364 (SR621SW), again from a dealer on eBay for just £2.99.

Here are the tools I used to open up the back:
1. Watch case opener knife
2. Watch spring bar remover
3. Plastic tweezers

Steps:
1. Remove the straps using the watch spring bar removers.
2. Just pop up the case from the side using the watch case opener.
3. Remove battery using the plastic tweezer.

Here's the video clip:

Fortis Sports Tuxedo watch

This is the latest addition to my growing watch collection. It's a vintage Swiss made Fortis Sports Tuxedo hand winding watch, which I got at a bargain on eBay. Like any stuff you buy over eBay, it is a bit of a gamble but this time it paid off. The watch has kept good time since I last set it this morning (as soon as I opened up the package).

I am still new to horology or the art or science of measuring time but I am learning a lot. I learnt that the company is based in Grenchen, Switzerland that was founded by Walter Vogt in 1912. Working with John Harwood, the British inventor of the automatic wristwatch, Fortis came out with the first self-winding (automatic) wristwatch, the Harwood Automatic in 1926. They are also the official supplier of watches to the Russian space agency.

About the watch - surprisingly for a company which has been around for more than a century, there was very little information about the Watch. As mentioned earlier, it has a hand winding movement and 17 Jewels. It is encased in a stainless steel case with an after market black leather strap. The watch measures 36mm (without the crown)

The description on eBay said that the watch crystal is Sapphire crystal but I found out that it is actually clear acrylic glass. Another mistake in the listing was the age of the watch. It was mentioned as modern (2000s) but I found out that it is a vintage watch (1971-1983). It might actually be older than I am.

Some more pics from the eBay listing.

If you examine the last picture carefully, you will see that the movement is made by Camy, an old Swiss brand. I cannot seem to find any information about the brand and seems to have just disappeared though there are a number of their vintage watches floating around on eBay. Does this mean that Camy used to supply movements to Fortis? Or is my Fortis a "frakenwatch"?

Vintage Everite Watch

Got this vintage Swiss made quartz watch at a bargain on Ebay (where else). Stainless steel with gold coloured plating, it still runs perfectly without any loss of time. Estimated to be from between late 1960s to early 1970s.

Found out that 'Everite' was the store brand of H. Samuel of Manchester. Many of them are either solid gold or gold plated but you can get them between £30-£100 on the net.

UPDATE: I am now selling this watch on ebay UK http://r.ebay.com/FWw76k SOLD

Favre Leuba Sea King

I love vintage watches and while ebaying, noticed this nice looking Favre Leuba Sea King manually wound watch. I have heard of the brand before but it was ridiculously cheap.

This Swiss watch brand was really popular in India and I remember hearing that Indian company Titan bought the company in 2011. Not sure how old this watch is, the seller only mentions "vintage (1920-1970)" but I have seen another similar one on a website from 1959. Plus the fact that the seller was from India made me quite suspicious but I decided to take a punt and buy it.

It took several days to reach and was getting a little worried when I finally received it. It was nice and shiny with a brand new leather strap.

I do not really like the huge heavy watches so popular now but I think that it is a bit too small (Case is 34mm including the crown). See the comparison to my old Tissot PR50.


The face is repainted and looks ok but if you examine it in detail, you will realise that some of the dots (for the minutes) are far from professional. They are all over the place. It also does not have the words "Swiss Made" which I see on other original and unpainted Favre Leuba watches.




As for the movement, it has the Favre-Leuba 101 shock protected, antimagnetic movement.

Wound up the watch and it was ticking. However, a few hours later it was dead. I really felt cheated and complained to the seller and he was willing to refund the money but I would have to send it back. It was not worth the effort and I took it to a small watch shop in Coventry city centre. The seller refunded £5 pounds.

The watch shop took it's time but I finally got it back this week. They replaced a spring and have serviced it - all for just £30.

I first thought of selling it on for around £100 and making a small profit but after wearing it couple of times, it has grown on me.

My first vintage manually wound watch.

Everyone is wearing a Tissot

Among my colleagues, I have become the guy they should consult before buying any electronic product. Not sure whether I can call myself an opinion leader but I guess I am. Now, it seems that I am also becoming their fashion accessories consultant. That's so wrong because I am definitely not gay nor a metrosexual. I am just a normal old-fashioned type of guy.

Last year my wife gave me a Tissot PR 50 watch as our anniversary present - the gents version of the one she has. "Matching! Matching!" in her words. Reminds me that our anniversary is coming up soon – in fact it falls next month.

Anyway, one of my friends was looking for a new watch to replace his old one and asked my opinion regarding various brands in the market. Of course, I recommended Tissot.

Why?

1. It's a Swiss watch.
2. It's a brand with a long and proud heritage. The brand celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2003. The company was founded in Le Locle, Switzerland in 1853 and is now part of the Swatch group, the biggest watch company in the World.
3. It's one of the classy yet among the most affordable brands.

If you have seen Mr and Mrs Smith, the Angelina Jolie/Brad Pitt adventure flick, you might not have realised it but both of them are wearing Tissot T-Touch watches.

Actually, this is not the first time Jolie has worked with the Swiss brand. She also wore the Tissot’s T-Touch in the movie: Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life.

My dream watch, the T-Touch offers 8 separate functions including an Altimeter, Chronograph, Compass, Alarm, Thermometer, Barometer as well as Date and Time. You may say, "So what? Even my Casio has all of those features?" Ah! That is where the similarity with the Tissot T-Touch ends. Pressing on the crown and then touching the touch-sensitive screen activates the functions.

Anyway, coming back to my story. One fine day, I noticed that my friend had bought a new watch - one exactly like mine. Yes, it’s a Tissot watch. According to him, "it was the best looking affordable model in the watch shop".

Yah right! What happened to all the Seikos, Citizens, Swatches, CKs, etc, etc.? However, unlike, ladies who would die if they were caught wearing the same clothes or fashion accessories, guys don't have that problem. So I have no problem with my friend wearing the same watch. Show's that we have similar good taste.

NOTE: I was not paid by Tissot to write this post.