Watches in the 21st Century

[Prana Ferox]

I'd wager an iWatch gets more attention from would-be robbers than a Rolex. That's an 'in the 21st century' data point; one is considerably more liquid than the other on the black market.

There are so many variants of Fauxlex (from brand-name homages up and down the price range, to outright fakes with their own spectrum) that spending the money on one to take it out of the box and wear it around seems kind of silly anyway.

 

[pseudoid]

There are so many variants of Fauxlex

Like this one?

 

[JeffS7444]

I recently visited a Swatch store, and they had a bunch of Peanuts-themed watches:
https://www.swatch.com/en-us/swatch-x-peanuts.html
And I didn't have to search very hard to find moderately-priced pop culture tie-ins from other watch makers, covering Tintin, the movies of Hayao Miyazaki, Pokemon, Mario, Hello Kitty, Naruto, sports teams, automakers, etc, etc. So I think it's safe to say that one reason people still buy watches is to flaunt their fandom without getting into messy status signaling.

 

[rdenney]

Too many closeup photos of hairy wrists in that thread clearly there are no professional hand models here.

We could all be like Ariel Adams (a subjectivist watch reviewer) and shave our wrists, but that’s a little creepy, too. I’m not one who believes males ought to be feminized.

(My hands are less pudgy now than 7 or 8 years ago when I made this photo, but wrinkles are getting worse.)

Rick “who has very large hands and was once recruited to model them” Denney

 

[iMickey503]

I just buy stuff that looks cool:
And I have Girly wrists. Great for working on cars. Bad for Flexin...

Very small portion of my daily collection that I did not pack up.


I got this for $8 bucks or less shipped to my door. LOVE this thing. It just looks so 80's.

Another 80/ early 90s style watch.

Secind favorite watch of all time. I just like the look of it. I use it TO much while I working on cars. You can see the wear and Gear lube.
Made by Zoo York. Cost me a bit over $80 after on sale, but worth every penny. Of all the watches? I love wearing this one the most.

Love the look. HATE the Fake dials. Why they do this? I neverknow. Its stupied. Tacky, and lame. But love the leather band, and they way it looks with my jeans, jacket T shirt is just me. This is the other one I wear the most.

I just got this in the mail a few days ago. Its actually fully legit working watch with backlight, LED and working hands. Alarm, day etc.
ITS PHAT!

I bought this watch in California at a thrift store. along with my a REAL nice open frame watch (Packed away not pictured)
And got it SOLEY cuz it looked nice. This was before I learned those dials were fake. Looks nice. But a bit tacky.

I THOUGHT this was a REAL Diesel watch. If it is? I'm not impressed. It nice looking. But feels like a tin can. Dials and movements work But you can tell on the clock face with the red second hand that the 3 other dials are fake.

Watches still in the box? Never opened? My EGARD watches. I own one brand new in the box. And will never wear it.
Just owning this makes me remember just how far I got in life. To me its more then just a watch.

Was going to buy a Nixie watch, but never saw the point. Just not my taste. I have not found one i really liked.

The watch I find most striking is one

I found a used one for $21,000. But something like this? Could I buy it. Sure. Would I? No.
Its not the price as much as its rarity. I would only display this as art. I could never trust wearing something like this.
Imagine getting radiator fluid on this, or I forget to take it off and scratch it. Not really for a guy like me. I just like the engineering that goes into these watches and that's what makes it special for me not the jewelry not the ornaments but how someone put these together and how even a thousand years from now they will still be relevant.

DEVON makes some stunning timepieces.

I figure that I will only buy a watch as high as my credit limit on my card, since that's only been 10,000, I'll stick to that and bellow.
But soon, one day... It might get a bit above 50,000. Imagine charging that to your credit card.

 

[Berwhale]

A colleague of mine bought a nice Omega as a promotion present for himself and I planned on doing the same, but my promotion came and went and I didn't bother.

I promised myself the same and did the same I decided there were better things to spend my cash on than this lovely Titanium Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean...

 

[bloodshoteyed]

I bought a Huawei GT2e...

got the gt2pro two years ago, but paid quite a lot more tho i didn't mind
got it for basicaly the same reasons (sleep tracking, but also stress) and it might already paid itself off

tbh i didn't use it much for a time while changing phones and figuring out their app was available only through their marketplace and not google play

and yes, mine still holds at least 12 days before needing a recharge

 

[SimpleTheater]

I have a couple of Nomos’s and wear them when going out to a fancy restaurant or dinner party. Most of the time I wear a $99 Fossil Hybrid watch, which now sells for $169 because COVID. I hate the look of smartwatches, but the hybrids can be quite fashionable.

My eldest son, OTOH, is a mechanical watch collector without the means to acquire too many, being relegated to a Tudor for now. His reason is, as a mechanical engineer, interested in the concept of never needing a battery.

Every time I lust over a gorgeous $15-20k watch, I remind myself that it doesn’t tell better time than my hybrid watch, instead that $8k power cord upgrade will make my stereo sing. It’s all about priorities.

 

[JohnVF]

Going out and buying the go-to Rolex will get you attention from people who know what a Rolex is but who aren’t “watch people.” It’s like ordering a California Roll after saying you’re into sushi.

 

[Gorgonzola]

I wear my Marathon T5K423 all day even when I sleep. It does not fray my shirts and jackets at the cuff like my stainless steel Seiko did and it has large fonts and is easy to read day or night. When the battery dies I buy a new one. Great disposable watch. Expense is about CDN $34-$40 depending on sales and shipping rate.

I wear my Marathon T5K423 all day even when I sleep. It does not fray my shirts and jackets at the cuff like my stainless steel Seiko did and it has large fonts and is easy to read day or night. When the battery dies I buy a new one. Great disposable watch. Expense is about CDN $34-$40 depending on sales and shipping rate.

Basically I find it easy to ignore the appeal of very expensive, mechanical watches. A $50 Timex or comparable will keep better time and look almost as good.

But then I also find it fairly easy to ignore the appeal of very expensive high-end audio in this day-and-age when you can buy a well-constructed Purifi-based power amp for $1500 and a Topping Pre90 for $900.

 

[LarryRS]

I wear an Apple watch every day. Lots of features I like. I also have a Bulova Accutron Spaceview. An iconic timepiece for me.

 

[Blumlein 88]

I have a Garmin fitness/smart watch. It is very thin, thinner and smaller than conventional watches. That limits what can be shown on the display, but for fitness apps over your phone that doesn't matter. And it still displays the essentials.

I've repeatedly had women and young girls ask me what watch it was. They say they want a smart/fitness watch that does not have a big ugly display. I would suppose like many geeky things most customers or at least early adopters are men. I think they'll figure out more watches that aren't so huge will increase sales among women in time. I don't like the big and thick displays myself.

Like this, mine is in black. There is no sense of scale in the picture, but the watch is not quite as wide as an index finger and the thickness isn't much either. You hardly notice you are wearing it. Maybe you'd say I'm wearing a girly watch, but it makes my skinny forearm look bigger.

Garmin vivosmart® 4 | Fitness Activity Tracker | Pulse Ox

Style meets function with the vívosmart® 4 fitness activity tracker. Features include a Pulse Ox sensor to gauge your blood oxygen saturation levels.

www.garmin.com

 

[Ron Texas]

@Blumlein 88 fitness/smart watches are the latest thing although I don't know much about them. Mostly, I see women wearing them. It's interesting that mechanical watches continue to sell, and manufacturers create new models in the face of such a profound change in technology.

 

[BostonJack]

I wear a Hamilton Khaki model (whose styling I like a lot) as my day to day. I sometimes wear a 1962 Seagull, a Chinese watch made by the company that made the original '62 Seagull, given to Chinese pilots.

I'm looking at a Hamilton Air Zermatt model (with a blue on black styling that is pretty striking). That one is a $600 watch, which is about my upper bound. The Hamilton I own is nice, but cheap enough that if I lost it at the beach I wouldn't cry myself to sleep.

Pardon the poorly staged photo below (but no hairy wrists):

 

[JohnVF]

I wear a Hamilton Khaki model (whose styling I like a lot) as my day to day. I sometimes wear a 1962 Seagull, a Chinese watch made by the company that made the original '62 Seagull, given to Chinese pilots.

I'm looking at a Hamilton Air Zermatt model (with a blue on black styling that is pretty striking). That one is a $600 watch, which is about my upper bound. The Hamilton I own is nice, but cheap enough that if I lost it at the beach I wouldn't cry myself to sleep.

Pardon the poorly staged photo below (but no hairy wrists):

View attachment 181693

I have a Hamilton Khaki as well, very nice looking watch. I bought it after a promotion, actually, a long time ago. Now I wear an old Seiko Liner or even older Omega with a bumper movement... if I can get it back from my watch guy who's taking forever to service it.

 

[Raindog123]

Rick “sometimes in places where phones are not allowed” Denney

“21st century” watches (with RF transmitters) are usually not allowed in those places either… So, simple quartz movements are the answer.

 

[Kagemusha]

I always liked the IWC watches.

 

[rdenney]

@Blumlein 88 fitness/smart watches are the latest thing although I don't know much about them. Mostly, I see women wearing them. It's interesting that mechanical watches continue to sell, and manufacturers create new models in the face of such a profound change in technology.

My impression from talking to friends is that the fitness watch wearers fall into to 2-1/2 categories. The first are those who for one reason or another received orders from their doctors to monitor stuff, or are on weight-watchers or something and are required to track their activities. I given folks in this category a by. I know watch enthusiasts in this category, and they often wear the fitness tracker on their other arm.

The second large category are those who are fitness signaling. (This includes those wearing an Apple Watch and showing off the fitness tracking to their similarly lethargic friends.)

The half category is for those who are actually into fitness, though for most serious fitness geeks of my acquaintance (and as a former triathlete that is not a small group) track their workouts using a watch, but the novelty of tracking things like heartrate wore off long ago. Serious fitness geeks never track "steps". Perhaps I am projecting, and self-selected with like-minded acquaintances. Perhaps not. None of my old triathlon buddies, including those still quite seriously into endurance sports, wear fitness trackers while in street clothes.

Rick "who wore a Timex Ironman when training for one and a Swatch Sistem 51 plastic watch for running and cycling now" Denney

 

[rdenney]

“21st century” watches (with RF transmitters) are usually not allowed in those places either… So, simple quartz movements are one answer.

Rick "fixed that for you" Denney

 

[rdenney]

I always liked the IWC watches.
View attachment 181694

Oh, me, too. That's one brand I would like to own, but just never seem to find a unique buying opportunity with them. In particular, the Big Pilot World-timer is really appealing to me.

But I put it in a category identified by one of my watch friends: it's a "V8." As in, "Wow! I could have had a V8!" If I was going to spend what a used IWC costs I'd much rather have a used Breguet Type XX for the same money, but then I'm fixated on that particular Lemania movement. Not that I have the money for either one at present.

Rick "which is also the base for the Ebel caliber 137" Denney