Watches

if you want to know the time, fuck up a pig

Does anyone wear digital watches these days? And whatever happened to Swatch?

Tch, preternatural - now there's an Anne Rice word.

Although a phone with a digital camera in would impress me rather a lot. I would gurgle over it.

I have two watches. One is a blue Bubbles Powerpuff Gurl watch. The other is a Hello Kitty Baby-G ripoff from Preston market. BOTH RULE. But they R being chunky so I don't tend to wear them much.

Go for anything digital and made from brightly coloured plastic, the chunkier the better.

I can't comprehend spending £200 on ONE WATCH. If I have to spend that much money on telling the time, I'd get 20 cheap watches.

I think I am going to buy a Paul Frank alarm clock.

been on a watch kick lately and i've bought four of the old school seiko 5s off of amazon and jomashop. mostly i've had vintage watches i found at thrift stores but they're unreliable because they all need to be cleaned and oiled and that's expensive. the exception is a late 60s omega seamaster deville that was running fast and i took it in to be cleaned and adjusted because you can't just unscrew the back and fudge with the lever because you have to take off the bezel and get in from the front and i can't do that and they had to do repair work on the mainspring or something and that doubled the cost but i'm like phoebe in that friends episode where she's afraid of riding that bike and ross is all like the bike needs you to ride it, it's dying. if i didn't pay to fix it i'd just have the idea of an omega; now it's fixed and alive and i've got a linchpin to an ok collection. i've also got a couple of late 60s and early 70s bulovas that keep good time but need to be cleaned. they run fine but then stop for like 15 minutes or so, then start up again. just need a good cleaning, but that'd cost more than they're worth. that's the price, though, to bring the past back to like, and that the point of vintage. it's something that was THERE at the time; it SAW things. some guy got it as a graduation gift or his wife bought it for their third anniversary before they started to resent each other because she gave up graduate school to raise their kids and he just accrued general dissatisfaction with life and blamed her and then she tried a new hairstyle and he didn't like it but that watch, it's from when things were still good. i paid 5 dollars for that watch at goodwill and now the residue of history weighs upon my head. i should at least get that damn thing running again so it can tell its story to the world, is how i feel.

the seikos were an alternative to buying a single decent watch. i got the snkl23, snk357, snk381, and snk385. they're inexpensive but there's a reason: the movements are sturdy but don't have hacking or manual wind, the water resistance is only 3 ATM, and the crystal is hardlex and not sapphire. seiko kinda updated everything and the specs are better but everything is way more expensive. i got baton hands, leaf hands, crayon hands, i think, and dauphin hands, blue, black, and silver dials, and stick indices and applied numeral indices. i think i've got a good variety of looks, and i'm in it for the looks. these things look classic, imo. the bracelets are crap but i've got a variety of leather straps. who is right, who can tell and who gives a damn right now? until the spirit new sensation takes hold, then you know. that's how i feel. disorder (joy division). until i dance into the fire, a fatal kiss is all i need. in other words, that'll do, pig. i want to get stuff, but then when i get it i don't know why i still want more stuff. i'll try to enjoy what i got. i think if if paid more for a better watch i wouldn't be able to appreciate the difference, and that's ok.

also i've got some 80s and early 90s swatches but the straps on two of them have dried out and cracked and that breaks my heart. you used to be able to get replacements easily but now i'm gonna haveta get something that's sorta close. one is the 1987 x-rated gb406 and the other is the 1986 nautilus gk102. these are beautiful and so information society and love and rockets and howard jones and the others are the 1990 tristan gb135 and 1984 chrono tech gb304. i have them; they're mine, and i'm responsible for them. i don't really wear the swatches but i like lookin at em.

all said, i'm stiil trying to reap the wild wind. there's still something out there i want that i don't know i want yet.

i got a scratch on the hardlex crystal of my seiko snk381 which is a kinda a reissue of a vietnam-era macv seiko military-issue watch, sooo cool unless you find that problematic no argument, so i took it in to a watch place to get a sapphire crystal replacement. it'll cost about 125 us dollers or so and the watch cost about the same so i'm just wasting money. no regerts. now i just need to spend about 80 to replace the folded-link bracelet with a solid-link one with a milled clasp and i'm all set.there's a seiko mod community on utube that's a real thing and they got to me. for the same price i could have just got a good microbrand with better specs.

i spent 88 bucks to get replacement straps for the swatches. money well thrown down the drain. they're only approximations of the og straps but that's ok. they're the 80s swatches so there's a lot of color blocking and memphis group style going on, so you can more or less get close-enough solid colors and it works. i have an early 90s tristan that's giving versace with the rococo filligrees and whatnot and the straps are very specific to the dials so if those go there's no way i could get suitable replacements. so i can't wear it. old swatch straps dry out and crack and then i killed cultural history. i still have it and can look at it.

those fucking swatches really look like the year they were made in. if i hold my gk102 nautilus up to my ear i hear bizarre love triangle or paranoimia, no lie.

the nautilus had a blue silicone bottom half and a green silicone top half so i actually bought one set of each to get the required halves, just to show how stoopid i am. i re-used the og red clasp, though, so that authenticity still permeates the whole set-up.

Slugbuggy - dig your posts!

I always think watches are cool - I admire the craft and the style, especially when the designs and colors are eye-catching. Somewhere in this house are two pocket watches I was given a lifetime ago, and haven’t worn in 10-15 years.

Ultimately I don’t buy or wear watches because I know I’d lose or break or lose interest in them quickly.

Whenever it’s time to leave the house I need my glasses, wallet, keys, and phone (which has a clock) and a watch would expand the quartet of essentials to a quintet.

yeah you can just look at pictures or youtubes online and you don't have to buy anything. i'm reminded of that coke commercial from the 80s where there were surfers in maine or something who were riding like two-foot waves and one of them said the best part was just talking about it with their fellow surfers. you don't have to have bona fides or ride the big waves you just have to like the thing for whatever it is.

It's not often you see "twenty-two years pass". It's also fascinating to see one of the posters from 2001 dream of a phone with a built-in digital camera. Technically such a thing existed back then, but only in Japan (the Sharp J-SH04). Japan was so hip!

I had a look at watches a while back - I think there comes a time in a person's life when they think about owning a posh watch, and also I'm scared I'll drop my mobile phone. It's a lot easier to glance at a watch during a long meeting than at my phone. I ended up buying a Seiko SKX007, which is the archetypal affordable diver's watch. The thing that really stood out is that it's self-winding! You just wear it, and it winds itself up.

And so every time I introduce myself to someone as part of my work I have to point out that (a) my watch does not go any faster if I masturbate (b) in any case I wear it on my left hand and I masturbate with my right (c) or sometimes my left (d) why are you looking at me (e) stop looking at me.

I'm surprised to learn that Seiko discontinued the SKX007 four years ago. It had been in production forever. My dad had a variation of it back in the 1970s. I think mine was £120 or something. It was the default "legitimately good cheap diver's watch" for many years. On the positive side it's smaller and lighter than I expected and the crystal glass is fantastic - it has no distortion and looks completely transparent even from an angle. On the downside if I take it off over the weekend it runs out of puff. And the date just counts up to 31 before wrapping around, so on certain months I have to reset the date. September, April, June, and November. And February. Fuck you, February. No, it's not your fault. Fuck you, Pope Gregory XIII.

I remember looking into the Omega Speedmaster. The NASA moon watch. There's a whole subculture of people who fetishise them - early models had a dot over the 90 in the bezel, later models had the dot to one side, so there's a market for reproduction "dot over 90" bezels etc. But it struck me that owning a £7000 watch in isolation would be pointless. The only people likely to recognise it would see through my fakery immediately. Would it make sense as an investment? Probably not. I already have a fridge stocked full of Sunny Delight(r) bottles. The originals, from 1998. That's my investment. One day Steven McCoombes is going to die, and his fridge will be switched off, and then if people want to know what Sunny Delight(r) tasted like they'll have to come to me. And I will be able to name my price.

i don't feel right not wearing a watch.
after bh died i treated myself to an expensive-to-me watch (£350).
hard crystal glass, solar powered, and picks up the exact time every night while i sleep.
it's probably the last watch i will ever buy.
(though i am always tempted .. )
my eldest has already put his claim on it for when i am no longer of this world.

I got my first watch when I was 7, a Casio F-100. Then in 1985 I was given a Casio DW-200 (the Argos catalogue £19.99 "diver's watch") for my birthday. I never wore this to school because it would have got nicked but I wore the F-100 until the glass got cracked in 1989. Then I bought a Lorus for £5. Wore it up until 2000 when I bought a Casio F-105. The rubber strap disintegrated in 2003. Then I had a Casio Futurist A220 from 2003 until 2022, when the metal tab that held to the 3 fold clasp closed fell off due to metal fatigue, and then a week later the light button broke. I replaced the strap on the F-105 and have been wearing it since. I'm fascinated by watches but could never imagine spending more that £30 on one.

totally with that snoball.
hence when i got this watch i was totally 'behave its £££!',
but my lads pushed hard saying 'dad, you want it .. just get it .. '.
no regrets.
it is course a casio edifice.
even before this watch i was always into the whole casio thing.
i was that nerd in the 6th form who had the calculator watch.

i haven't really paid attention to dive watches because huge but new old stock skx007s are going for $600 or more on amazon and so forth. that's crazy. used ones on ebay stat at $200 or so and go up from there. the indices on the 007 or the 009 (red and blue pepsi bezel) and the arrow and syringe hands are pretty iconic. a lot of dive watches look alike but (full metal jacket reference) that one is yours, it is your best friend, it is your life. it is discontinued, amen.

seiko did this thing where they split up their watches into the prospex line and the seiko five line. the prospex has actual iso certified dive watches, but the five sports line has watches that look like dive watches, but aren't. there are watches that look identical to the skx007 or skx009, but the specs are off. it doesn't have a screw-down crown, so the water resistance is only abt 100 meters, which means you can get it wet briefly but don't dive with it. i'm kinda ambivalent about this development. on one hand, you aren't really going to go diving anyway, it's mostly just the looks, but on the other hand, ppl who are gearheads want the thing the pros use because authenticity.

my brother has an skx781, the first generation seiko orange monster dive watch. his now ex-wife gifted him that for a birthday or christmas or something, so he's understandably ambivalent about it. it's ungainly, a garish spectacle of a thing, and i was not impressed. now i think its got personality for days. because you can't get it anymore, unless you pay a premium for a so-so watch;:that's the nature of history. once you delineate between now and before, before becomes elevated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k6zB7SICyc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6kvMoj-WZk

the short lugs lessen the overall visual presence, says the video. you don't have to live inside any rabbithole but glory to god there are rabbitholes to delve into. the rounded indices compliment the nature of the case. who cares? design ppl care. i don't know if this is good design but there's there's the starting point. for some reason i'm reminded of when i bought brian ferry's boys and girls on cassette at dingleberry's in in centerville, ohio, and i unwrapped it in the parking lot and popped it into my car tape player and unfurled the insert and read the whole thing while sensation played. it was 100 degrees outside and the smell of the ink on the insert mingled with the hot asphalt and the staccato guitar figures and dulcet horn tones and abrupt so 80s drum hits and that's the way i remember it. sensation indeed. my point is, the seiko skxoo7 looks like a personal memory. i don't know about it myself, but it has that feel. i'm kinda drawn to the skx007 because it was designed to look like it contains personal memories even though i have none.

i'm way off course but that skx007 is pretty ok; you should keep it.

if you don't collect anything that's also ok; it's just stuff. stuff is complicated.

The colleague who goes scuba diving wears a generic smartwatch at work. I've no idea what watch they wear when they're diving or their opinion on watches that have the aesthetic of diver's watches but don't function as diver's watches. I was thinking earlier this morning that maybe wearing a cheap Casio digital like my F-105 is some kind of anti-aesthetic, but I decided that it isn't. It does the job as straightforwardly as possible, and its aesthetic comes from that. Mine's showing a bit of wear now, but that's part of it as well - it's inexpensive enough that if it does get scuffed it doesn't matter.

yeah, there's also a casio cult, but having one doesn't mean you're part of it. unless you want to be. you get to decide; nobody needs a watch anymore.

Casio are absolutely the worst for this, because there are so many angles, some of which they seem to be actively marketing to. 'Vintage' for the 80s crowd, Baby-G for the 90s/00s ravers, the pointless ruggedisation of G-Shock (a designer at Casio said that the metal G-Shock could survive being run over by a truck - could your arm if you were wearing it at the time?)

mmmm yen so weak… grand seikos so nice…

hey if you can get a grand seiko cheap then get one. they don't look all bling-bling but you know better. put it in your will that you be buried with it and watch down from heaven (or up from wherever, i guess) who among your heirs steals it off your corpse in the casket during the wake. that's the smart one.

i saw a watch i wanted! it's a standard microbrand vintage-inspired thing which is most of what's out there but it seems cool and cheap and the specs are decent. it's got a sapphire bezel! never seen that before. kinda an omega seamaster dial and a rolex gmt master bezel. i don't even know anymore what's good or not. this seems like it was ai-generated to appeal to a specific consumer subset that i'm part of apparently because retro vibes and i'm ok with that. it's bland in the way all focus-grouped output inevitably is but it's all just right down the middle. it's vintage-hommage-but-got-its-own-thing-going-on. i've got a bunch of crap vintage watches i got at thrift stores over the years and i've been wearing them and now the rest of the world is copying me. you're all just jealous that i thought of it first.

anyway this watch may seem like nothing special but imo it's the apotheosis of *waves hands in the air* "that whole thing" (guffman reference.) it's like weird al's dare to be stupid: the amalgamation and perfection of what it targets.

https://www.detroitmint.net/product/detroitmintgmt/99?cp=true&sa=true&sbp=true&q=false

if you clicked on that link and were disappointed i told you already. the shock of the new, where is that in your psyche anymore? this is all the old things together in one package and it tells the time.

and I’m not just saying that because I am a fabin

The strap on the F-105 was splitting so I didn't wear a watch for about two weeks and felt fine about it. But the power button on my phone is on its way out so checking the time on the phone is awkward because the button has to be pressed at a certain angle to switch the screen off. So I replaced the strap on the watch earlier this month and needed to buy a tool to remove the spring pins and then a box of assorted spring pins because I managed to break one of them trying to remove it from the old strap. So including the strap itself I've spent about £30 on a watch that costs £27 new.

if you can get a grand seiko cheap then get one...

I ended up picking up an SBGX063 while in japan… it’s gorgeous

There was another watch thread that I posted on years ago but this seems like the most recent thead and the one to keep going?

I've gotten a watch bug back.

My story? Graduated high school in 93 and was given a Victorinox Swiss Army field/military type watch, simple, nice enough. Wore if now and again but got out of the habit of wearing watches.

a few years later, after college, there was a brief spell where I had my first real job and relatively disposable income (and hadn't started a record label yet) so I got into the idea of old watches. eBay was newish and I bought a few that only worked occasionally. Two old, really cheap Waltham watches that I still love the looks of.

Then I got a dressy Hamilton, one of the new retro ones, a Hamilton Lloyd (not the chrono).

I wore that regularly and was really into Hamilton and wanted a Jazzmaster.

My only other watch was an 80s Rolex oyster that belonged to my grandfather. It was simple and classy. Leather strap. My grandmother told me that even the buckle was a gold one from harry winston so if I replaced the strap, I needed to keep and swap the buckle. I saved that for special occasions.

A few years later I got a Braun watch. Nothing too expensive. I was leaning heavily into my graphic design/printing persona and it suited me. There was a guy I vagely knew who was a designer and we were at a BBQ and he clocked it and I figured, it was doing it's job.

Then at some point I needed more of a beater for when I went running and I got a cheap Casio. I just knew I wanted "the terrorist casio" and got what I thought it was but the one I got was actually the intended replacement, the W800.

And that was it for ages. Then a year or so ago I wanted a nice simple watch that didn't have a metal band like my Braun and I bought a Timex Waterbury which was very cheap and very nice and I love it.

And that was fine or months until recently I got upset that I couldn't see the time in the dark and I hate taking out my phone so I really wanted something cheap that would work at night, in a club, in a theater etc.

I bought a white Casio F91W (the terrorist watch) and it looks great fashion-wise but the digits are so small and the "light" is almost totally useless. I didn't realize that the F91W was smaller than the W800. So that didn't solve my problem but I like how it looks.

Then I bought a Casio A168W which has a metal band, a reverse LCD and actually functioning light. Because the LCD is reverse I find it hard to read unless you look right on, but that's fine, I kinda like the idea of watches don't tell the time unless you need it to!

So I was going crazy and decided to buy an Indiglo because i figured that was the best way to get night visibility and got a Timex Expedition that looked great and had military numbers and day and date and was also dirt cheap, and it's cool but the face is actually so busy it's hard to read at times!

THEN I found the answer to my problem in a Timex Easy Reader. It's got big huge numbers, tiny military hours, day and date and indiglo.

oh yeah at some point my father gave me his old Omega Deville but it's not really my style and he's not sure it's legit.

SO....

Amidst all of this I got the bug again for sure. Just obsessed with cheap watches. The idea that a good watch could cost from 30 to 500 dollars. Started looking at microbrands and Seiko 5s and Citizen Eco Drive etc. I have a really strong sense of what i like in a watch, which is closer to bauhaus style or military/field or dress, i.e. I don't really believe in lots of bells and whistles that you don't actually need, like chronographs, divers etc.

Now I'm downloading books and watching videos about swapping batteries and cleaning and stuff. Using Claude to research selling affordable nice-looking watches to people who only have an apple watch and want an actual watch that doesn't need daily charging and doesn't look bad and doesn't cost a lot.

Oh I should add that tragically, I think I threw out my grandfather's Rolex. It's really terrible. Not even because it was probably worth a few thousand dollars...it was my grandfathers. We had a bedbug scare that had us putting tons of stuff sealed into black plastic bags and thrown out and some stuff sealed off and stored and I think, all I can imagine, is that I may have tossed a bag that was holding some important stuff in it (included that watch). If you live in NY and have dealt with bed bugs you know it's no joke and things get torn apart and crazy. I'm not excusing it, just admitting what a giant fuck-up it was. There's part of me that still thinks MAYBE that didn't happen and it'll turn up somewhere, but I think that's unlikely.

I don't think anyone escapes life without having some fuckup that bites deep into your soul whenever you recall it in the darkest hours of the night, because it hurts and it is irretrievable. :-(

Victorinox Swiss Army field/military type watch

An ex gave me one of these for Xmas in like 1996 or so and I've been wearing it every day since. Incredibly durable.. change the battery twice a decade and it just keeps going

unlike the relationship amirite

the hands on my swiss army watch have melted away where the lume was!

Works fine other than that.

I'm really obsessed with indiglo and the casios with really good light. I don't want lume that fades out.

I was even curious about a watch that would have a light strong enough to actually be useful like a phone light, but the only thing I found was some tactical cop type watch.

still going deep on this new old obession (old new obsession?) buying tools and watching videos, just found this website that is just insanely clear, even if my eyes water over a little bit at a certain point.

https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/

Found this site awhile back... refurbished Soviet watches

I've been researching a lot of this stuff with Claude and here's what I got on that site:

Is sputnik1957 legit or just a Russian version of frankenwatches?

Searched the web
Searched the web
Your suspicion is well-founded — the honest answer is "a bit of both, and the enthusiast community leans toward the skeptical read." Let me separate the two questions, because "legit" can mean two different things here.

As a seller (will you get a working watch and decent service)? Mostly yes. The Trustpilot reviews skew positive — buyers describe good-quality refurbished-and-serviced vintage watches, reliable and polite communication, and repeat purchases, and there's a named person (Artur) who reviewers say gives expert help. They've operated worldwide since 2017. So as a transaction, most people get a watch that runs and a responsive seller — with at least one serious dissenter who claimed a watch sold as "80s vintage Russian" was actually a cheap brand-new low-quality watch, and had to involve their credit-card company to get a refund.
Lonely Wrist + 2

As a source of authentic vintage (is the watch what it claims to be)? This is where your frankenwatch instinct is exactly right, and the watch-enthusiast forums are blunt about it. The WatchUSeek verdict on a Sputnik1957 "Shturmanskie" is the key one: in common with most of their items, it's a vintage Soviet watch refurbished by a Russian craftsman with a new dial and hands to make it a copy of some other vintage Soviet watch — an old 1980s Raketa dolled up to look like a 1950s Shturmanskie, described as typical of fakery in the field of vintage Soviet watches. That is, precisely, a frankenwatch: genuine old case and movement, but a married/redialed identity it never originally had.

So the accurate framing: they're a refurbisher/reseller of Soviet watches, and a meaningful portion of the inventory is "improved" into something it wasn't — redials, swapped hands, an '80s movement dressed as a '50s icon. Not outright counterfeit (there's usually a real Soviet watch underneath), but not honest vintage either. It's the Russian-watch version of the same India-Etsy redial problem we discussed — skilled cheap labor turning ordinary old watches into more desirable-looking ones.

Worth adding the broader Soviet-watch context, because it compounds the issue: the vintage Russian space is famously the most franken-riddled corner of the entire watch world. Real Soviet factories used interchangeable parts loosely, documentation barely exists, and the "Sturmanskie Gagarin"-type icons are endlessly faked — the forums note originals often had radium lume and are genuinely radioactive, so even "real" ones carry a handling caveat. So distinguishing authentic from married is harder here than almost anywhere.

For your purposes, the practical read:

If you ever bought from them, buy the watch as a good-looking, running Soviet-style watch at its price — not as an authentic, original, collector-grade vintage piece, because a chunk of the catalog is redialed/married and you'd be overpaying if you treated it as the real thing. The $113 "Shturmanskie" is a fun object; it is not a 1950s Shturmanskie.

it's referencing and earlier conversation where I had found a huge amount of beautiful vintage watches all being sold on Etsy by Indian dealers, and that's where I first read the term "frankenwatch".

yeah I remember in the earlier days (late 90s) of eBay where Russian sellers would rework old (and plentiful) Soviet Leica-copy cameras, add a swastika and some German writing and try to sell them as 'authentic Wermacht WWII camera' but only the biggest suckers were falling for the ruse

"I remember looking into the Omega Speedmaster. The NASA moon watch. There's a whole subculture of people who fetishise them - early models had a dot over the 90 in the bezel, later models had the dot to one side, so there's a market for reproduction "dot over 90" bezels etc."

In the years since I posted the above Omega and Swatch teamed up to make the MoonSwatch, which was controversial as heck, because it was sold as a kind of budget Speedmaster... and, yes, it is Speedmaster. The brand name was invented before mixed case was a thing. In the 1960s. Back when men were men, and velcro was lethally dangerous in a pure oxygen environment.

Dot dot dot a kind of budget Speedmaster, complete with (yes) a dot-over-90 bezel, but it was released as a "drop" that ended up with crowds outside Swatch stores, as per the recent Royal Pop watch. But posher:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoonSwatch

I like to think that the people who work at Swatch resemble the "thin men" from the XCOM games, e.g. very pale and thin, almost vampire-like, dressed in dark suits, who speak like the agents from The Matrix. Tubes come out of their fingers that can probe people's minds. That's how they know how to make the mass market queue in the rain for their juice. They know how to squeeze the juice. They aren't human beings. They're vampire horologists. Postmodern vampire horologists.

The MoonSwatch was also controversial because it has an ordinary, battery-powered quartz movement that is more accurate and probably more durable than the movement in an actual Speedmaster. Second-hand MoonSwatches, of a type that resembles a Speedmaster, sell for around £300, versus £4k+ for a second-hand Moonwatch. And to make things real spicy-like the Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch technically isn't the same watch that was taken to the moon, because it's a tribute model released shortly afterwards. So do you go for something that has an engraving of the moon on the back, or the actual thing? Who will know the difference?

This is why, when people ask me what it's like to be staggeringly wealthy, I look them in the eye and say "how do you ride a horse". I'm going to go on to the next paragraph now.

As mentioned up the page I still have my Seiko SKX007. I'm in an odd, first world quandry. The power reservoir is starting to lose its puff. When I take it off after a busy week furiously masturbating to security camera footage from the psychiatric ward it runs down in the early hours of Sunday. But servicing would cost more than I paid for the watch. And apparently Seiko just pops out the movement, throws it away, and puts in a new movement. They still have spares. And yet for £14 I could buy a Casio. For £35 I could buy a really nice Casio.

There are three analog dial casios I'm looking at.

this one:
https://www.casio.com/intl/watches/casio/product.MTP-1370D-1A1V/

this one:
https://www.casio.com/intl/watches/casio/product.MTP-VT03L-1B/

and to a lesser extent, this one:
https://www.casio.com/intl/watches/casio/product.MTP-V001L-1B/

That first Casio with the full day name also makes me want this Timex rolex homage:
https://timex.com/products/timex-legacy-day-and-date-41mm-stainless-steel-bracelet-watch-tw2v67800

all that stuff about soviet watches is accurate to my understanding. buy them if you think they look cool but that's about the end of it

still going deep on this new old obession (old new obsession?) buying tools and watching videos, just found this website that is just insanely clear, even if my eyes water over a little bit at a certain point.

https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/

― dan selzer, Monday, July 6, 2026 2:51 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

this is really neat btw, best explanation i've ever seen

totally. I've been checking out some books and they're all old and they start like, just beyond this level of explanation. I feel like even halfway absorbing that diagram/site has explained so much for me.

I don't know how far I want to go, or will be able to go. Interest is one thing and mechanical aptitude is another.

I swapped my wife's band last night. That's the very first level. OK. I have a few quartz watches that need batteries, so I'll be opening up some cases and confronting that next.

After that I'm eager to try this...

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1448973768/back-light-spreader-for-casio-f-91w-a?sr_prefetch=1&pf_from=shop_home&ref=shop_home_active_1&crt=1&sts=1&logging_key=e26d8e0cc3073819bf07a05f79ed0e92464feaf6%3A1448973768

a simple and dirt cheap mod that makes the Casio F-91W backlight much more visible.

Eventually? I have two old Walthams that don't run great and eventually I hope to be able to open them up and oil them and see about getting them running.

i support just trying stuff within whatever your tolerance is. i resized a grand seiko bracelet which was probably dumb because man those screws are small. but i did do it, and i still don't like the bracelet very much lol.

those are not cheap watches but they sure look nice.

I got my first "microbrand" watch yesterday:

https://sheffieldwatches.com/products/visilume-gmt-yellow

$248 for a Seiko movement automatic GMT, sapphire crystal, 200m water resistance. 41mm width which is about as big as I like to go on my wrist, a bit bulkier than I like but feels like a tank.

I mean, that's crazy right? People spend 10k on a watch that offers nothing more than this but a name and more boring look.

Now I'm looking at his quartz watches at 63 dollars, the QL1. Just have to choose a color and would probably swap the strap.

I'm discovering so much stuff in the affordable realm, having a ton of fun. Microbrands, budget offerings from the big companies, Chinese factory manufacturers, JDM watches from Japan that don't even exist in the states.

JDM is the latest discovery...Q&Q, Citizen's budget brand, sell a line of Swatch-esque functional plastic watches called Smile Solar. They're 50-60 bucks, decently water resistant, colorful and the only places I've seen them online outside of Japan is 1 store in the UK and a few japanese import sellers on Amazon.

Been talking to Claude about this for a few weeks now and trying to understand the landscape, and there are a lot of reasons why this is, regarding demand, thin margins on inexpensive watches etc, but it feels like there's a void here worth filling. I have some ideas but also not sure if I'm just naive being relatively new to the watch space.

that's cool, definitely looks ready for adventure.

it's a hobby that attracts a ton of people with a ton of different motivations, interests, and passions which is why there are endless niches to be filled.

I’m wearing a very nice 1960s OMEGA seamaster that my day gave to me for a birthday present a few years ago. What I like about it is that it’s from the transition period where European watch companies were loosing out to cheaper Japanese competition and went from making useful objects for people who needed to tell the time to ridiculous conspicuous luxury objects.

I’d love a Seiko from the same period. I’ve got a lovely Seiko mechanical clock on the kitchen wall which I bought from a woman off eBay for a hundred bucks. When I picked it up she said she was glad for me to have it because she couldn’t take the bongs. The clock has two winders, if you don’t wind the left one it doesn’t chime.

When not wearing the omega I wear cheapo Chinese watches from aliexpress, I’ve got an automatic that keeps great time and worth 50 dollars of anyone’s money and a clear backed one I bought for my son to sea the mechanism. I was wearing it at a clients office recently and she was seriously impressed as it’s a knockoff of some boutique Japanese brand I can’t remember the name of.

Would be interested in knowing what this $50 knock off boutique is! My automatic just died so looking for a cheapy replacement atm

conventional wisdom is that Aliexpress has a few directions to go, some are major chinese names/manufacturers, often the same factories that are making the more expensive microbrands worldwide. Others are fakes of those.

The legit brands are more than 50$ but not much more. Some focus on hommages/clones but others have their own style.

Names that seem to pop up as popular are Addiesdive, Baltany, Boderry, Cadisen, CIGA, Merkur, Pagani, Parnis, Red Star, San Martin, Shanghai Watch Factory, Sugess, Thorn.

sorry CIGA shouldn't be on that list. $$$

This is the cheapo automatic, it works really well and keeps good time.

https://a.aliexpress.com/_m0ccygL

This is apparently a knockoff although I still have no idea of what. It keeps absolutely lousy time.

https://a.aliexpress.com/_mq4Ayaf

that first one is a knock-off of this maybe?

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256809346746243.html

The one you posted says 21 Zuan, costs 28 dollars and is sold by Alan Watch Store

The one I posted is almost identical but it says 22 Zuan, costs 193 dollars and is sold by "brand + certified original" which is Tianjin/Seagull. So that's the "real" reproduction!

For all I know the one you posted uses the same seagul movement. I dunno.

That second one, Phantom, I've seen before, seems like it's a cheap chinese brand making knock-offs of Paulin watches

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256812106777360.html

Hand wound, 31 dollars

https://www.paulinwatches.com/collections/watches/products/modul-e-quartz

Quarts, 475 dollars

Paulin's manual versions are over 1000.

dan you're probably aware but there is a very mature subculture of Seiko 5 mods where you can buy parts to make your automative seiko look like pretty much anything. And if you don't want to do the work yourself there are people who will do it for you. A lot of it seems centred in Singapore but there are Seiko freaks everywhere apparently.

these are the two sites I used when I was getting mine modded:
https://theyobokies.com
https://rafflestime.com

I ended up with a dial quite similar to this:
https://theyobokies.com/?mod=product&sec=item&task=detail&id=451

Though if I was doing it again I'd try to get something with a stronger lume because like you i want to be able to see the time in the dark

yeah I've seen talk of that but haven't really explored.

Lume is very frustrating. Anything less than Timex Indiglo or Casio EL seems useless.

Constantly on the lookout for the ideal thing.

The only lume I find useful is tritium, which glows in the dark continuously without having to expose it to light first. It can also glow red, blue, and others as well as green. Main downside is it slowly becomes dimmer over the years, being usefully bright only for 10 to 20 years after which you'll need to redo the lume or just have a non-glowing watch at that point.

I can’t believe with today’s LED tech there isn’t something easy that could be done. I just want to be sitting in a movie and look down and see what time it is.

I’ve also been researching accessibility and watches for people who are blind or low vision. There’s a bunch that speak the time but at least two that work with touch.

I just picked up a late 80s quartz Omega Deville with the tapestry dial at a small antique market on holiday. It wasn’t running and the crown was pretty badly corroded — plus the last thing I need is a small gold-plated dress watch — but it was cheap and so damn classy, I couldn’t resist. I took it to a watchmaker who did a quick clean and battery swap and it worked! He also swapped in a fresh Omega crown, which cost more than the watch itself. I wore it the other day when we had neighbours over for coffee and I felt like some retired artist in his summer home.

nice. as mentioned, my father gave me his gold omega deville and said "I think it's real. I bought it in europe. The seller said he didn't have the papers at the moment so he took my address and was suppose to send them to me but never did. It cost 35 dollars". I told him I don't think it's real.

that transaction is in a textbook somewhere

My partner found a sixtes Wittnauer diving watch at an estate sale for a buck about ten years ago, and I was delighted to wear it for a few years until it stopped working. I have no idea what it would cost or where to take it to get it working again, but I'd love to. We used to have a watch repair guy who estimated $500, but he's since retired.

I made a tshirt/hat. You can buy it print on demand here:

https://sutnar-shop.fourthwall.com/

omg what

dan have you become a seiko maniac

Yes. Trying to buy cheap vintage “junk” 70s and 80s models from Japanese proxy sites but I think the ship has already sailed on that.

breiko

Awesome, Dan - ordered.
Signed, a happy Seiko Presage (Mojito) wearer.

Awesome!

Took a chance on a Proxima with good specs (sapphire, PT5000 movement, aventurine dial, etc) in the recent AliExpress sale. Should find out shortly if it’s as good as it sounds.

https://i.postimg.cc/cJ0jp50b/IMG-0790.jpg

new anordain porcelain numbers are pretty

I have a 1962 Rolex Oyster Perpetual Air-King that was my dads; he apparently got it from his uncle for his high school graduation and the uncle bought it in singapore while in the navy?

Haven't thought about it for a long time and it never quite worked but I want to get it fixed up BUT it's like a $1000 to have it checked out and refurbed at an official Rolex service place which feels kind of wild.

that kind of thing is tough...I paid 2k to have an old synth of mine fixed up but I knew the value after fixing was considerably more than that (and it was a long time coming),

that watch is certainly worth at least twice that and possibly a lot more?

I have no idea how the variables all work (definitely no boxes or papers) but based on cursory searches it would sell for at least 2k minimum - but am I ever going to actually sell it? It would be pretty cool if it worked though...

First impression of the Próxima is very good. Bracelet feels slightly lighter and janglier than my Tyusosa Small Seconds but not bad at all, and does have micro-adjustments at the clasp. Finishing is great. Dial is beautiful. Will have to see how well it keeps time but for a sub-$200 RRP, it looks like incredible value.

omg get the air king fixed and working xp!

(My Casio F-105 is) showing a bit of wear now, but that's part of it as well - it's inexpensive enough that if it does get scuffed it doesn't matter.

Tripped and fell at work today and now in addition to the many many existing small scratches there's now a small bit of scuffing on the body. It's above the screen so it doesn't obscure the display. Oddly enough it now reminds me of my grandfather's watch (which was some unknown gold automatic watch) which was also heavily scuffed and scratched because he wore it all the time, even when he played cricket.