Reply With QuoteSorting member list by date gives jim and Molle both joining 20 October 2002. Both appear to be active (though not frequent posters).
Edit- Maybe sweets is earliest joiner joiner?
Originally Posted by sweets
So this is forum-related rather than strictly watch-related... I saw a reference in a thread on Sales Corner to the famous Thanks Crusader thread, took a look at it and it was a real trip down memory lane. It reminded me of various members who have been active on the forum for a long time, including Peter (aka griswold), Bob (aka rfrazier) and me. Crusader himself is no longer active, nor is Ming Thein (who is now not just a person but also a whole watch brand, of course!).
It started a train of thought around who is the member who joined the forum earliest and is still an active contributor?
If we exclude the boss, who actually joined on the 18th of October 2002, the longest serving member I can identify appears to be John (aka abraxas), who joined on the 21st of October 2002, 24 hours before Tinker.
Did anyone join earlier than that?
Simon
Last edited by mycroft; 6th July 2020 at 10:50.
Sorting member list by date gives jim and Molle both joining 20 October 2002. Both appear to be active (though not frequent posters).
Edit- Maybe sweets is earliest joiner joiner?
Last edited by Kingstepper; 6th July 2020 at 09:42.
Alongside "thanks crusader", we should use "catmuck" as well.
If you click on Community/Member List/Join Date then you can sort the list by date joined. After that you can determine what counts as active.
R
Ignorance breeds Fear. Fear breeds Hatred. Hatred breeds Ignorance. Break the chain.
I have been here for about 11 years I think. And there were loads of old sweats here already. Was a very close community then (still is, but has a few issues as it has grown somewhat).
I was here for the whole TaiMiShu (can’t remember the spelling of the forum name) debacle, and for sometime before - when she was an involved and seemingly decent member. That was very interesting.
Seems to be drama like this all the time now. Back then it was gripping! :)
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Last edited by notenoughwrists; 6th July 2020 at 13:59.
As a recently-joined TZer at the time, I found Tai Mi Shugate to be eye-opening, arse-clenching, and surgeophobic all at the same time.
We had the pleasure at a few GTGs - my feelings did not change.
Duh... didn't know that! Just shows how little I've learned in 15+ years!
Simon
It seems that I'm third or fourth, depending...
Quite a thought that the forum's nearly 20 years old!
In my time here and 26k posts of nonsense I've physically met roughly 15 members, without the infamous 2008/2009 Edinburgh GTGs it would be a just three F2F deals.
What a strange world we live in now
Ahhh, white gold sub-gate. I remember it well!
I’m a relative newbie having joined late 2003, I’ve learned a lot and spent far too much.
The forum has changed dramatically in that time though.
Surely it's that Chippendale fella?
"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action."
'Populism, the last refuge of a Tory scoundrel'.
I am a newbie joining in 2008. Lots of change here (and in the world) since then
Did you used to be on US Timezone before that and did you have a Speedmaster interest at the time? I might be confusing usernames!
Although my join date says 2008, I had a different username prior and just decided I wanted to use my first name which is why I changed in 2008. I think I've been around since 2006. Previous to that I was a US Timezone lurker and discovered this place after becoming obsessed with Eddie's Speedbird 3 which was being designed at the time.
I think one of most hilarious incidents that stands out over the years was the whole Tai Mi Shu thing. Surgery, helicopters to Monaco, a WG Sub followed by an appearance on Dickinson's Real Deal...it was bizarre. The fact she developed a bit of a posse was a bit cringey too, especially when the whole charade was called out.
Dawson2k comes a close second. From the start I felt this guy was a bit of a lost fantasist. I think he worked as a doorman in Newcastle but wanted to join the army? He flipped through an inordinate amount of watches. At one stage, I remember some people followed him here from another forum to doxx him. In the end, there was some kind of meltdown where he ran off with someones money. Some sleuth work to try and get this guys money back led to his fetish for "breath-play". Again, all very strange.
I've met up with a few regulars here for a coffee during face-to-face deals. Everyone I've met so far have been good guys.
Last edited by Christian; 6th July 2020 at 12:03.
There was an earlier forum, run by Timefactors, before this one.
"The whole purpose of mechanical watches is to be impertinent." ~ Lionel a Marca, CEO of Breguet
Oh yes - made me laugh that did Mike!.
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
I'm a newbie - coming up on 17 years!
I Was on Time Zone (US), WUS, Zowie and EOT (amongst others!) at the time but this is the one I have stuck with.
Cheers,
Neil.
I think quite a lot of us from that era started on the US Time Zone before realising it is very 'american'. It must be the origin of the cringe phrases like "pull the trigger", "bad boy" and "new shoes". I don't know the guy but I'm also amazed that for about 15 years, nearly on a daily basis, Jorge Merino has managed to post N E W M o d e l
WUS was always a weird maze of sub-forums to me so I'm not sure I even bothered registering an account.
I've recently joined the facebook group "Urban Gentry Watch Collective" after seeing a watch I wanted was advertised there. I find it pretty cringey a lot of the time...lots of "wrist rolls" (yuck), "should I buy this or that" (which always reminds me of "does my bum look big in this?") and the typical american "check out this picture of my watch, my knife and my EDC concealed carry firearm". I've also endured people giving out positivity videos of "I've just bought my first GMT watch because I now zoom call another country...look at what I have achieved". Basically, everything I dislike about a watch forum rolled into one. Give me TZ-UK any day even with its occasional minor squabbles. Kind of feels more intellectual.
Last edited by Christian; 6th July 2020 at 15:11.
Yeah, what is the deal with the ‘watch roll’?
These days we have huge quotes, followed by one line answers!
"The whole purpose of mechanical watches is to be impertinent." ~ Lionel a Marca, CEO of Breguet
How times have changed.
I was quite late joining here (2010) but was quite active on the tias.com Watch Discussion Group mailing list back in the late 1990's and on the alt.horology Usenet group (which is still going, but with minimal traffic) from around then as well.
I started on Zowie, completely forgotten about that place.
There was also alt.horology on Usenet even earlier than that.
I remember being on Timezone a long while back. Was also on WUS as well (I think). Joined here and never looked back...
That is due to lazy posting and/or Crapatalk IMO.
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
Approaching 16 years for me - jeez, guess I like the place........
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
I remember that John, levels of traffic were tiny at first.
I’m sure I’ve been around since 2002ish - lost my password at some point or something happened, had to re-join but it’s certainly been that sort of time
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Evening Gents
I just found this:
https://web.archive.org/web/20000301...12888499792148
That was, I believe when it all started - long time ago!!
December ‘99 jesus!
"email me for scans"!
Photo hosting sites were pretty much non existent back then.
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
I know, I had a photobucket account in 2004 or 2005 and it was pretty new then. I'm wondering if these really were scans of photos or if the seller meant for digital pictures. I'm guessing scanned photos.
I would agree - scanned photos.
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
I remember many years ago often getting and seeing photos of watches that had been through a scanner, plus many photo's like the one below I have just scanned and a lot worse on the likes of ebay, hid some little gems.
Tai Mi Shugate was an interesting time for the forum, gets a mention very year or two on the forum for some reason or another.
I think just because it was such a bizarre episode, you couldn't have made it up. For me it was strange how this new member joined who was clearly a bit unstable, became absolute centre of attention with a bit of a following then had a total meltdown when it transpired all the stories were absolute bs. The WG Rolex thread was like a car crash in slow motion with about 2 pages of people believing Rolex dealers would issue out a WG Rolex sub 'loan' watch before some brave member dared say it might be fake. Definitely stands out in all my time here.
Last edited by Christian; 7th July 2020 at 10:18.
Both a bizarre and sad episode.
I sort of miss reading about helicopters and genital tattooing in the same thread. Happy days.
F.T.F.A.
As we are looking back I remember when watch forums hardly had any pics, and members actually had to converse with each other! Probably better for it too.
I used to buy Omegas unseen from the US from ebay (top bid $61!) when most non-pro sales were image-less.
I remember Jocke giving me advice on how to post a pic by putting a shoe box on a scanner and then converting it to a jpeg.
It took me ages to actually post a pic on Time Zone but when I looked upon that IWC with the second hand dragging around the dial because of the time lapse I was enthralled.
Even when I eventually got a digital camera you had to enter a bit of code to allow more than one pic per post.
Kids today - don't know they are born!
Cheers,
Neil.
I'm a total noob having joined in 2009. I was also here for the meltdown TMS-gate thing.
Took a year off but nice to see so many were still here when I returned recently.
I joined Nov 2002, having read this thread I went and looked at the earliest threads on Watch Talk and saw I had posted about a vintage Roamer Stingray I had got off ebay, Eddie contributed alot to those early threads.
I then moved onto to the launch of the Dreadnought around August 2003- That was a great time for the forum, molle, EwanW, Ernie Roamers, Jeroen and Jocke and the excitement of this new watch here and on other fora - good times (pity there are no photo's in the threads)
I even congratulated Eddie on getting 200 membershttps://forum.tz-uk.com/showthread.p...Congrats-Eddie
If you could bring one of the disappeared back, who would it be?
My choice would be Mike - mr1973 - Salzburg's finest pervert, and king of the comedy one-liners
I used to post and come back a few days later to see if anyone had read it, a response was mind blowing.
Everything is so immediate now and everyone wants to be liked
Gray
And scans, at least for me, started as a watch face placed down on a flat bed scanner. Some very interesting purchases that way
Gray
I didn’t realise it’d been so long, things have changed a fair bit for better and worse. Thanks crusader
I was on timezone for a while before I joined TZ. Still drop by there occasionally.
At least the thread didn't stray off topic as there is an obvious connection there
I do miss the days of picking up 6139's and the occasional 6138 at below £50. Some of the bootfair finds were the stuff of legend - particularly the banana Seamaster........but that may have been on The watch forum because a quick search hasn't turned up anything on TZ.
Last edited by catflem; 7th July 2020 at 18:14.
Here for 11 years now. It was really difficult to be accepted back then. Had to wait for quite a while for a window of availability.
Was before that on watchprosite. Lovely place, but a tad too well-behaved for my taste.
Think that my very first post was a SOTC, and had some really nice reactions (from most fellows, a couple were less trusting of my intentions, what with me being from Romania).
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