Reply With QuoteReceived a DJ for my 21st, had no interest in watches before then.
I’m a late developer at 64. My ‘interest’ arose from a reluctance to continually pay overinflated prices to have the battery changed in my 30 year old Ebel. So I began a search for a decent mechanical watch that I could wear on all occasions. Settled on a DJ as I fancied accuracy too.Would have preferred a see through back but hey ho, maybe next time
(Hope this hasn’t been done too often but a search didn’t throw anything up.)
Received a DJ for my 21st, had no interest in watches before then.
OP - you do realise there is no way out now? You will have 10 watches in less years if you stay logged into this forum!
Anyway, to answer your question. For many years I (like many I suspect) had an Omega Seamaster Bond Quartz (aka GoldenEye) . Then I fancied something different and tried the Omega multi-function Seamaster - though the first one flooded first time I wore it in the bath - even though it was listed as 120m wrt. Then tried a MK1 X-33 - super watch. Then got a Breitling Crosswind Special as my so the journey began.... that was more than 10 years ago - TZ being UK based was refreshing from the US centric other sites.
Martyn
OP out of curiosity how much were these battery changes costing you? Fairly simple task. Think my local watch guy only charges £5 or something if it’s a straightforward swap.
Datejust a great first expensive watch. The trick now is to make it your last. Good luck with that 🤣
When I was 7 or 8 I received a Timex watch for Christmas.
I've been ill ever since!
An older colleague at work sold me this Omega as he 'had too many watches'. At the time, a situation as far beyond my comprehension as if he'd admitted to be in possession of too many legs.
That was 1992. I now have too many watches.
Bought my first Seiko watch when I was in The Far East in the late sixties. It lasted years. Eventually it became so worn you could hardly see through the crystal. So I binned it and bought another. I only used to buy only one watch. As time went on I would have a work watch and a dress watch. Now it’s a few more watches.
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Ebel charge about £250 as they fart around with it too. The cheapest I’ve managed was about £60. The battery can only be accessed from the front and the movement has to be removed and the case has no removable back. Bummer really. Looks nice though.Originally Posted by RustyBin5
When I was a kid I used to sit with my grandpa while he set his watch to the radio pips. Right after that he'd peel an apple in a oner and we'd share it. When I was old enough he bought me my first watch which was a transparent swatch with a holographic dial. It was always right on the pips so I used to sit and look at it while he set his.
I used to play dress up with my dad's watch which was broken in a drawer. The second hand had fallen off (later research = it was a tissot seastar)
Then my mother bought me a Seiko kinetic arctura from HK duty free which I wore for years til the bracelet broke and the capacitor gave up.
That set me looking for a replacement. I wanted an automatic as I knew it wouldn't suffer from dead capacitors etc.. went for an oris.
By then it was a bit too late to stop the bug so the oris went in favour of an early planet ocean and then and then and then.
Got a black dial Timex for passing the 11 plus in the 70's, followed by a couple of Seikos up to my late 20's. First mechanical, the gateway drug if you like, was a rectangular Oris pointer date, to add to a Tag 2000. Two watches - the decadence - but little did I know.....
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Ah front loader - ok
I have a vague recall of timex watches when very young. I bought a scuba swatch when on holiday with X-1, when it died I bought my first more expensive watch, a Sector. It lasted a few years until I dropped it on holiday when adjusting the time, the crown was never seen again.
X-2 bought for me a tag f1, the original small model, when we first met, and I wore that for many years.
The rot set in when I learnt of a Rolex AD quite local to me that offered good discounts. My TT DJ arrived, and I maintained a moderate interest, few ins and outs; then I arrived on TZ. Steep and slippery slope......
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At school in what must have been 1982 or so I swapped something (who knows what) for a Casio calculator with part of the front missing, so you had to guess what the numbers were. Key for me was the fact it had a light, and I felt very important being able to tell the time myself at any time of day. Digital watches were incredibly cool back then for nine-year-olds, the more functions the better. Swatches were very cool and I had three or four of those into the 1980s and it all went a bit Timex, small TAG Heuer diver etc until I was 26 and saw my first 2531.80. I bought one with a £400 deposit and with £400 on a year's interest-free credit and it took off from there. Funnily enough I'm wearing it right now.
"A man of little significance"
my dad was interested in them but he was 'just' a working guy so didn't have anything deluxe but do remember him buying an Omega f300hz Geneve on a holiday in Jersey and having it on a 'fix-o-flex' bracelet. He bought me a Sekonda chrono for a birthday and when I was 18 I got a Pogue. Neither of those watches do I still have and cant remember what happened to the Omega
In 1994, whilst on holiday in Portugal, I bought a 1946 14ct rose gold Helvetia watch from an antiques shop. This was an impulse buy, the holiday was almost over and I had some spare money.........that’s how it all began.
In 2010, having taken early retirement/redundancy from work I got into service/repairing, that’s when the fun really started!
Other interests are taking priority thesedays.
Paul
James Bond. As a 9 year old. Then looking in my local camclock and watch centre and studying each watch for ages before saying, "Gran, I want that one."
Fast-forward 35 years and I saw a post for skx009 on hotukdeals from Creation. That's expanded to 40+ more in past 3 years.
Plus around 100 straps..... :-P
I wanted a watch for my 18th birthday,and I got a seiko which I thought wow that’s a right chunk of a watch ,I’ve still got it but it must of shrunk has it looks tiny now
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I always liked watches even as a kid and remember buying a nice Citizen chrono when I was about 16 with my own money, what sparked my interest in higher end watches was working in a 5 star hotel when I was about 18 and looking at the watches some customers were wearing, in particular Rolex.
Passing interest since getting into F1, and seeing Senna wearing Tags.
Really solidified when my twins were born, we had to spend a long time in hospital (4months), so my main hobby/interest (cars) was pretty much abandoned. Started watching watch videos on YouTube to pass the time, became a hobby/obsession.
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Scottish Trunk Monkey.
A couple of things.
First was my grandad, who was blind. He had a Braille watch and it fascinated me to watch as he ran his fingers over the dial to check the time.
Second was my dad who always wanted a Rolex but could never afford one but had a nice “dress” watch, which I still have as a keepsake.
My parents bought me a watch - a bi-metal Citizen quartz annual calendar - for my 16th birthday and it finally gave up the ghost 2 months before my 30th birthday. I still have that watch in a drawer and wore it pretty much every day without exception for 14 years. I wasn't really interested in watches and the Citizen became such a familiar fixture on my wrist that the whole issue of whether I actually liked it any more didn't really occur to me. Faced with a distress purchase, I decided that turning 30 was a good time to invest in a decent Swiss automatic and started off doing some research. I got hooked very quickly and ended up with a short-list of 4 watches (all quite different in style and feel) that I couldn't choose between. I therefore decided to do the obvious thing and acquire all 4 over time, starting with an Omega SMP 300. The other 3 watches followed over the next 3 years and here I still am, some 15 years and 40-something watches later. Ironically, I now really dislike bi-metal watches and only own a few quartz models, but my passion for horology has only grown over the years and I remain as curious and hungry for knowledge as I did when I first started out on this journey.
SGR
My father was in the navy and had a chronoswiss chronograph (can't remember which one) and I was bought the Hopalong Cassidy timex watch I think for a very early birthday, later on, maybe at 9 or 10 years old, I was bought a Sicura Submarine the rest as they say is history.
B
the desire for wanting a 'nice' watch when i started earning 'good' money and rewarded myself for the hard work i put in to be able to allow myself to buy one.
Bought a Tag F1 in 2010 and not looked back since.
From childhood I owned multiple quartz watches, digital and analogue. As a teenager I really liked fashion brands so had lots of Guess, D&G etc
It wasn't till about 5/6 years ago when I started learning about automatic movements through random YouTube videos that I started to get a real appreciation for the work that goes into automatic watches.
After my first speedmaster I was hooked!
A video by a youtuber who is a friend of a friend. It was last year and I ended up my buying a Seiko 5 :)
Sitting in the Mess in Majunga Madagascar listening to a sad tale of woe from a broke Pongo who sold me his Oyster Precision for £20. It was 1968 and £20 purchased a lot of beer.
Lost my 1st watch when windsurfing back in the day.Meaning around thirty years ago. A Seiko diver. For some reason that drew me to wanting more.
I also only bought that same brand untill about five years ago.
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Right from a kid I had an interest in wristwatches from a techie cool point of view.... and like many National Geographic ads played a part too.
Fast forward and I'm in the market for a reward watch for myself and I start getting into watch fairs and the like while hunting The One. I never found The One but what a ride.
Gray
My old man's always had an interest, I guess it rubbed off!
I wanted a Watch and a bike. Bike came first if I remember and ai got a timex which I still have at around 7 years old.
I also dismantled several old pocket watches and old broken watches dad had. As a farmer he was hard on them. They were certainly broken when I was finished with them. Never got around to put anything back together.
Then last year the old itch arose from the dim distant past and I had to have a Rolex.
Of course 1 wasn’t enough.
First time I read this I saw in a mess on marijuana!! 😂
Great story btw :)
It goes back to my dad buying me descent watches at junior school, ie better than the rest of the kids. I had pretty nice digital watches as an 8 year old in the late 70's. They were de-rigour then with their alarms and light up screens. They were gents watches. So a bit big at the time, but i didn't care. I spent many a maths lesson fiddling with the day and date change. Boris Johnson was a few years older than me and in my cousins class, so i had to find something to entertain me.
My Dad. He was always skint but loved all things mechanical. He had an English long case clock and a French mantel clock, both of which he bought in bits. I helped him maintain them and got the bug for timepieces. If he were alive now he'd give me a good rollocking for wasting so much money on posh watches
As a kid I remember messing around with my Grandad’s draw full of watches that mostly didn’t work. My Nan told me that several were bought when they visited Switzerland during the 50’s. Unfortunately the old fella passed away in 1981 and I never found out what happened to his watches. My Nan died in ‘97 and my Mum has no idea where they went.
I had a Timex Diver in the late 70’s which I wish I still had. I bought my first “premium brand” in 1995 - a Breitling Colt which I paid for with my year end bonus.
A few years later I ran a training course where we talked about Premium Brands and why people buy into them. One of the examples used was why people will buy a Mechanical watch for several thousand pounds which is (in theory) less accurate than a 99p Quartz watch.....from there I got quite interested.
Then I discovered here and became a lot more addicted
About eight years ago I saw a Junghans Max Bill in the menswear department at Liberty. I was a couple of years into my first design job and my creative director had introduced me to Bauhaus and Mid-century Modern etc. At the time the Max Bill embodied everything I was interested in… I thought it was the perfect watch.
However, I knew it would look out of place on my wrist. Too clean, too delicate. And, at that point in my career, it was too much money.
But that Max Bill planted a seed and when I got back from that trip I started researching watches.
I didn’t realise how deep the rabbit hole goes…
My interest has been lifelong but really kicked in during the Senna Tag Heuer days, couldn’t afford one at the time though. Fast forward until a few years ago and illness meant I couldn’t ride motorbikes or drive fast cars, so what is a man to do with some spare cash? Watches!
I always thought you had great taste Paul :).
A boy’s Timex for me around the age of 7 (c.1970). I used to go to sleep listening to it ticking. I don’t know what happened to it but I bought an identical one a couple if years ago just for nostalgia.
I don't think that was anything particular that sparked my interest in watches. I had my first watch at 10, my parents and grandparents always had a watches, so it was only natural to have one. In the early 80's there were russian quartz watches that were a novelty and my father had one. It was very accurate compared to usual garbage you could buy here. In my teens I went through several watches - mechanical ones (usually destroyed by smashing crystal or water ingress), then quartz, then digital wonders with backlight and 8 or 16 melodies. I remember that my mother bought me Komandirskie watch around 87-89, because of they were supposed to tough, guess what happened in a next few month :D Nearby watchmaker always greeted me with "what happened now?" when I opened his door with smashed crystal or whatever damage I made :)
I was around 27 or 28 when I bought Longines Conquest quartz. It went downhill very quickly - next one was Seamaster GMT, then Fortis, Hamilton, both sold to fund Speedmaster, then again the same Hamilton and month ago I sold everything to get watch that I wanted since ~1995-7 - white Rolex Explorer II.
Last edited by Normunds; 14th August 2018 at 07:27.
My dad was into watches and on a family holiday to Thailand I got a fake rolex (sacrilege I know but I was only 8!). The hands fell off it but i always noticed watches after that.
Got a tag for my 18th and a rolex Submariner for my 21st which are the only watches I have I will never sell
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my grandad showing me his Omega auto in the late 70s that 'didn't need winding', nor had a battery! I was mesmerized...
later on I have to say seeing the Poljots on QVC and realising how affortable mechanical chronos had become got be interested for real.... from a collecting point of view
I was fortunate enough to be given a Rolex by work - ended up choosing a Batman & the rest is history
From around the age of 10, I used to scan through my Dad's car magazines - Autosport etc and I was mesmerised by the ads for Chronograph watches.
My interest started when I was bought a Timex boy's watch when I was 13 for Xmas. When I left school I became a Police Cadet and it was digital from then on. G Shock became the norm thereafter for the rough and tumble of a serving Police officer. I then bought an Omega '53 from a jeweller in Middlesbrough for £29!! (late 70's) and this stayed with me for many years (alas gone now). I've had a few other Omegas too but get a lot of fun out of other makes like Damasko, Certina, and a few of Eddie's excellent offerings.
I always asked for watches for my birthday, hoping that one day I'd get a digital, my parents had always made me wear an analogue until I could tell the time. So yes, I was very young, 6 or 7, maybe younger.
My watches always broke fairly quickly, but I never told my parents it was because I always took them apart so I could try putting them back together, not much you can do with your dad's tool kit though. Luckily, I don't take my watches apart anymore.
In a roundabout way it was you lot.
I always had a general interest but zero knowledge - I thought a Pulsar was tip-top. Then a few years back a used Tissot T Touch caught my eye and a bit of googling led me to this fine parish. I never did buy the Tissot and I haven’t found the exit from the rabbit hole I disappeared down yet.
One of these days I will scratch that t touch itch - it hasn’t quite disapated yet...
I was a very lucky kid, my Aunty bought me a 6 Million Dollar Man LED watch for my 7th birthday i think, but it may of been a later one- far too many moons ago to remember precisely. Then i had a Timex Mil style watch, which i loved as much as Steve Austin's LED beauty....
All of a sudden Tag Heuer reentered the scene, my brother buying one of the F1's, and i was hooked. I bought myself a nice 2000 midsize, which i sold off for the Japanese earthquake appeal many years later, to my son's dismay. The beneficiary or the ideal wasn't the cause for concern, it was the watch that was the problem... he really liked it. I'll make it up to him one day.
Plus, for some reason my view was, a man should have a nice pen, a nice watch and a nice pair of shoes, everything else was superfluous.
My brother bought me a Cross fountain pen, which i still use, for my 30th, i bought myself a lovely Omega Deville Chronometer, back when they were, and still are a unappreciated gem- you couldn't just walk into a shop and buy one, you had to order one, a 6 week wait!!! And i still have a pair of well worn, probably mouldy, Loakes brogues somewhere under the stairs.
Then i discovered cheaper watches, especially the Seagull '63 reissue, which was the reason i joined this forum, in the search for the beast. I found one, sold it, bought another to replace it, and it has been in my drawer ever since, a cracking watch ;)
After that, far too many in and out to remember them all.....
Watches are cool
And a good pocket knife. Seems like a good set to go through life with.
J
I’ve always loved watches; even before I sort of self-diagnosed myself as being “into” watches, I still had had things like the Speedy Alaska project, Tag Heuer, some nice Seikos... (and some things that I’ll not even mention, despite the passage of time).
The earliest ones that I can remember being really fired up about were just LCD Casios that were a bit different from those of the other kids, and a timex with a second timezone mode. I’d always change the second zone to a new city (referring to the tables in the back of my school atlas for the time offset!) and bore my family senseless with “guess what time it is in...”. Come to think of it, I need a GMT back in the collection 😐
My first 'proper' watch was a Tissot Seastar bought during my first year at work, second was a Seiko 7005-8020 purchased in 1969 onboard the P&O liner Orcades, third was a Citizen quartz bought on my first flight with South African Airways, still have those three, then a bi-metal DJ which I wore constantly for 20 years, buying seiko digitals as they came out, mostly 7a28's and 7a38's , an H357-5040 Bond watch (I now have three of those) and at one time I had 5 Gen 1 RAF 7a28's (wish I had kept those). I just had a quick count in the boxes and am down to 38 watches plus two pocket watches, most recent purchases were an IWC Pilot 3713 Dopplechrono to wear at my daughters wedding last Sunday and a couple of Vostok Amphibias (my latest branch of Wisery), so I think i'm done now... oh except Ewan's 6BB when the kickstarter opens, Eddies Daytona when it happens and anything else that catches my eye in between now and Christmas. All the best for your future purchases, I wish you well...
Gadget
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