Hi all,

After recently dipping into the forum for the first time I thought that it would be polite to introduce myself properly.

I started having a proper interest in watches after my wife’s Nan pulled a very battered Speedmaster MKii from the back of a drawer and thrust it in my hand about ten years ago. It looked like it had literally been run over. It had stone shaped dents in the case! It had the remnants of a bracelet hanging from the watch head and the cracked and scratched sapphire wasn’t pretty!



But I had a local watchmaker take a look at it and he did a pretty good job of restoring it. Admittedly there was no lapping facility for the case but it was now wearable. He found a suitable replacement bracelet, new crystal and did some polishing.



This watch had sparked the interest and I then learnt about the speedmaster etc generally.

My 40th birthday approached and I convinced my lovely wife that spending thousands of pounds on a watch was a reasonable thing to do and she agreed to contribute towards me buying a Rolex. I didn’t want a large watch and at that time the OP wasn’t an option (it just didn’t exist at that point which seems odd now) so I went with a lovely sunburst blue dialled Airking from Iconic (back when they could get some great watches at brilliant prices!).



I’ve loved wearing this watch for years and still think that it works as an understated piece. I’ve never had anyone notice that it’s a Rolex, which I like, as for me it was about marking the occasion between my wife and I. It’s great for swimming, etc too.

Around this time I sold the mkii for a Moonwatch speedie as I just got fed up with the hair-plucking, top heavy nature of it and figured that I would wear a moonwatch much more enjoyably and it would still be an homage to the watch that started it all! That was definitely the correct decision for me. I really enjoy the flexibility of the moonwatch on straps, nato, etc. And the bracelet is comfy too.




I went on to acquire a couple of C Ward’s over the years, which were both very nice watches and very good vfm but I honestly just couldn’t bond with them. The first was the orange bezelled diver;


And the second was the bronze chronometer C65 diver;


Both great, but not the sum of the parts as listed in some way for me? Maybe I just found them slightly too large for my wrist?

I sadly lost my father about two and a half years ago and inherited his old automatic Omega. Nothing fancy at all but lovely to have of course. It wasn’t running very well and needed some long overdue TLC so I asked Brendan (webwatchmaker) to look at it for me.



And it came back like a new watch! He did a fantastic job.





I had a very good year at work in 2016 so treated myself to a lovely little JLC ultra-thin that I saw in the window of Goldsmiths. It had been fully serviced by JLC and was basically a brand new watch at a great price. I even haggled a further £400 off the price too. It is a model that has the highly regarded cal 849 hand wound movement. Which I would love to pretend I knew when I bought it but only really found out after researching it later. It was even loved by the dear old Watch Snob on AskMen dot com! What ever happened to him? He was great.



Having worn and enjoyed it for some years, mainly on special occasions, I recently decided to sell this to make room for my recent purchase, the blue dialled JLC Polaris. I figured that again, why have so much money tied up in a watch that only get worn at special occasions. I don’t regret the move and love the Polaris. It is very comfortable and is everything I hoped that it would be.




So for those that have lost track, I currently have the Speedie Moonwatch, the Airking, the Polaris, my fathers Omega and a nice Oris that my wife bought me for a wedding anniversary two years ago.



So thanks for reading this far if you have, and I hope to contribute going forward instead of just reading! I’ve learnt a lot on here and in some ways it’s helped me shape my collection by understanding what is out there and learning from others mistakes or knowledge.

Cheers

Rich (the_gazelle on account of my long legs apparently!)