Why watches?

We live in a highly connected digital world. Technology is taking over our lives, from smart homes to self-driving cars, and watches are no exception. The Apple Watch and its ilk have ushered in a new era of connected smart watches and while I’m definitely a fan (my wife and daughter both own Apple Watches) there’s still something very satisfying to me about being a little bit analog in this digital world. While I don’t consider myself an expert on watches I’ve gained a lot of appreciation for old-school mechanical and quartz watches. I will admit I’ve not been someone to regularly wear watches until recently, but now that I’ve started I’m hooked. One conundrum I’ve had as I’ve ventured into the world of watches is that it would be easy to spend money hand over fist adding watches to a burgeoning collection, and I’m just an average working class guy – I don’t have thousands of dollars to spend on watches.

As I started looking around for my first watch I debated whether I wanted a new watch or something vintage, and ultimately I decided to go the vintage route. A quick check on eBay gave me what seemed like a million watches to choose from, but I was apprehensive to make a purchase after reading about the prevalence of “frankenwatches” from countries like India. Not surprisingly most of the watches I found in my budget on eBay originated in India, given rise to fear I’d end up being scammed. However I finally bit the bullet and bought a vintage Seiko 5 for $17.99. I’ll have more to say about that specific Seiko 5 in a later post, but it’s safe to say I’ve started to descend down a rabbit hole that I’m not sure I’ll be able to (or want to) crawl out of.