Watch Dandy

Editor’s Note: Recently we learned that there are people in the world who buy and wear broken watches. In between all the head shaking, tut-tutting and ‘what’s the watch world coming to’ etc amongst the team, we reached a surprising point. We learned that while none of us falls into this desperate and strange new category, we are, in fact, all very different watch wearers. The daily ritual for us of choosing, preparing and maintaining our watches is — if you’ll pardon the hubris — wildly dissimilar. So different that Dan took it upon himself to classify us, Indiana Jones style. These are the results of his field notes.   Perhaps naively, I’ve recently been enlightened that not everyone has the same obsession with watch wearing as I do. Until posing the question around the office, I took it as a given that setting the accurate day/date and time was just something every watch wearer did first thing in the morning. Oh, how wrong I could be! A morning ritual that I once thought was normal, after further investigation, seems to be borderline OCD. Delving further into the weird and wonderful ways other watch wearers choose to wear their timepieces, it seems we have uncovered that there are in fact three archetypal…

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It’s a question many of us in the industry get on a regular basis: ‘What makes one watch worth $1000 and another worth more than $100,000?’ To be fair, it’s a legitimate question from those less well versed in the world of watchmaking. At a surface level, and to the untrained eye, a traditional two or three-hand watch delivers the same indication of time, and the same aesthetic proportions regardless of price point, and a simple change from steel to white gold (for example) isn’t nearly enough to justify a jump of more than roughly $20k. The old adage of ‘the devil is in the detail’ couldn’t be more appropriate. Aside from choice of materials — as can be seen with things like the NTPT carbon and sapphire cases from Richard Mille, for example — where much of that retail price gets burned is in man hours, primarily in the delicate and painstaking process of handcrafting and hand-finishing components. If you follow the trials and tribulations of Time+Tide, you have likely heard of Geneva stripes, perlage, anglage, and other finishing techniques, and if you’re the right shade of geeky, you may well have deciphered which technique looks like what, but…

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There are few things more exciting than discovering an entirely new species. Especially creatures from the abyss, and there happens to be the largest and deepest one on the planet just to the east of Australia. Scientists recently discovered this cute little guy in there. He still remains nameless if you have any ideas? We also discovered a new type of watch wearer this month and in our opinion it’s significantly less savoury to consider than our seemingly scale and skin-less fishy friend. If you’re an easily offended watch person you should hit the Back button right now. Because, according to The Independent, there is “now a trend among watch collectors to purchase stylish timepieces that don’t actually work, making them void of any useful function altogether”. Is there really now? The story then goes on to list why it’s in fact a sensible idea, when broken down. To which we’d like to take the first right of refusal. Reason 1: “It’s fine because Andy Warhol did it.” No, no, no. The article ties the notion to a famous Cartier wearer, Andy Warhol, who in 1973 admitted that he didn’t “wear a Tank watch to tell the time. Actually I never even wind it. I wear a…

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