I am currently on hold whilst waiting to talk to an airline about a refund. Lets see how far through May's write up I get before someone decides they would like to speak to me.

Well wasn't May a bit of a wet? Plus not since Anil Kumble burst on to the international scene has the world been so concerned about Indian variations. As we enjoy greater freedoms it seems that an increasing number of us have better things to do than post photographs of watches on the forum. This month saw the lowest monthly number of watches posted.

Well that didn't last long. They cut me off. As this is a public area of the forum I shall refrain from writing down my thoughts and leave them to your imaginations.

Back to the write up. Yes May saw only 635 watches posted which is the lowest this year and also the lowest weekly average this year (158.75 to be precise). 125 brands were represented throughout the month with 12 brands making their first appearance this year and another 12 making their first appearance on the Friday thread. So, apart from the rain and the Delta variant, it was a quiet month. Perhaps the most notable occurrence was Carlton-Browne posting something other than a Universal Geneve.

The perpetual struggle between the top three continued. As expected Rolex didn't take last month's defeat by Seiko lying down and stormed back posting some high numbers in the first three weeks while Seiko slumped to the mid-teens which Omega took advantage of, jumping into second place on the 7th and joint second on the 21st. By the 28th Rolex had run out of puff and was soundly beaten by Seiko and pipped into third place by Omega by one watch, only the second time this has happened this year.

Down in the middle of the table it is the usual story of woe for some and joy for others. The woeful include Timefactors (with only 25 in the month and not breaking into double figures in any week), Breitling with their worst month of the year (11), IWC (plummeting from a monthly high of 17 in April to a new low of 3) and Panerai who's numbers have almost halved. Even Seiko weren't immune, their numbers dropping by a third from April although May's numbers are somewhat comparable with the last four week month back in February.

Enough about the woeful, what about the joyful? A new all time weekly high of five helped Hamilton into a monthly high of 10, only one watch off their all time monthly high of eleven. CWC had a cracking month hitting fourteen, helped by C-B straying from the U-G fold. Longines popularity seems to be waxing with a second monthly high in a row but still a way off last year's highs. For the first time we had two Alexander Shorokhoff's in a week (Tetlee's Regulator and Kamakazie!'s Kandy Avantgarde showing the range that this firm boasts). Bell and Ross are on a bit of a roll too, equalling April's high of seven. Even the niche Anordain had something to celebrate there being two in a week for the first time.

Despite the reduced numbers there were plenty of watches of note. Early on in the month Alft33 wore his sublime Smiths De Luxe, and Luvwatches wore his Omega Chronostop. Later we saw Kamakazie!'s handsome Baylor chronograph and boeingdriver's very cool Mars mission watch from Anicorn. And rounding up the month we had Yokel's lovely Moritz Grossman and Griswold's Hamilton Viewmatic also caught my eye. I can't finish this section without mentioning Caruso's Seahope Ever Increasing. Cool, bonkers cool.

Right enough of the drivel, here are the numbers:

1 Rolex 99
2 Seiko 77
3 Omega 77
4 Tudor 29
5 Timefactors 25
6 Sinn 21
7 Grand Seiko 19
8 Panerai 16
9 G Shock 15
10 CWC 14
11 Breitling 11
12 Damasko 11
13 Hamilton 10
14 Bell & Ross 7
15 Zenith 7
16 Ming 6
17 Citizen 6
18 Christopher Ward 5
19 Longines 5
20 Heuer 5
21 Jaeger-LeCoultre 4
22 Audemars Piguet 4
23 Certina 4
24 KMK 4
25 Tag Heuer 4
26 Patek Philippe 4
27 Steinhart 4
28 Sterile 4
29 Timex 4
30 Universal Geneve 4
31 Oris 3
32 Doxa (modern) 3
33 IWC 3
34 Junghans 3
35 Cartier 3
36 Garmin 3
37 Muhle 3
38 Schofield 3
39 Alexander Shorokhoff 2
40 Scurfa 2
41 Vostok 2
42 Anicorn 2
43 Dekla 2
44 Ebel 2
45 Eberhard 2
46 Anordain 2
47 Bulova 2
48 Fortis 2
49 Girard Perigeaux 2
50 Glycine 2
51 Hanhart 2
52 Lemania 2
53 Lorier 2
54 Stowa 2
55 Tissot 2
56 Vulcain 2
57 WMT 2
58 Bremont 1
59 Briston 1
60 Eterna 1
61 Glaschutte Original 1
62 Helson 1
63 Ingersoll 1
64 Makara 1
65 MkII 1
66 Monta 1
67 Moritz Grossmann 1
68 Moser 1
69 Nappy 1
70 Nodus 1
71 Orient 1
72 San Martin 1
73 Seahope 1
74 Szanto 1
75 A-13A 1
76 Altair 1
77 Android 1
78 Anonimo 1
79 Archimede 1
80 Aristo 1
81 Astro 1
82 Autodromo 1
83 Ball 1
84 Baylor 1
85 Blancpain 1
86 Boldr 1
87 Breguet 1
88 Casio 1
89 Davosa 1
90 Echo Neutra 1
91 Enicar 1
92 Favre Leuba 1
93 Halios 1
94 Helm 1
95 Helvetia 1
96 Lanco 1
97 Linde Werdelin 1
98 Meister Singer 1
99 Mondaine 1
100 Moscow Time 1
101 Newmark (Modern) 1
102 Nivada 1
103 Oceanx 1
104 Ollech & Wajs 1
105 Oscar 1
106 Peerex 1
107 Poljot 1
108 Pulsar 1
109 Reign 1
110 Revue 1
111 Revue Thommen 1
112 Roamer 1
113 SevenFriday 1
114 Smiths 1
115 Steeldive 1
116 Suunto 1
117 Synchron 1
118 Talis 1
119 Tauchmeister 1
120 Trias 1
121 Vacheron Constantin 1
122 Victorinox 1
123 Wolbrook 1
124 Yema 1
125 Zelos 1


For this month's bonus content I wanted to understand the relationship between the overall number of brands posted in a month and the numbers of the top three brands posted. I had a hypothesis that there was an inversely proportional relationship between the total number of watches from the top 3 brands posted and the number of brands posted. The theory being that when fewer of the top 3 brands were posted those who would normally wear one of the top 3 would wear a watch from a different brand. So I mined the last seventeen months of data (yes, it has been a while) and drew some lovely graphs. Here are the first two:

on Flickr

on Flickr


They seem to shoot my hypothesis down in flames. There appears to be a vague relationship between the number of Top 3 brands posted (either as a total or as a percentage of all watches posted that month) and the number of brands posted. There is certainly no inversely proportional relationship. The following graph shows that the number of brands posted more closely follows the total number of watches posted.

on Flickr

Which should have been fairly obvious really....