Smart watches are more accurate , easier to repair ,cheaper to run ,have greater functionality ,dont need service history and help to show that you are not someone afraid of modern technology .
Yet we all prefer the more expensive , less accurate , delicate watches that hark back to an older time of craftmanship .Similar to why true enthusiats would buy an older 911 instead of a new Taycan...Maybe theres still a future for mechanical items after all .
You lost me in the last paragraph ;-)
I dunno if smart watches are easier to repair S. They very much have a shelf life, not least because of advancing tech. If you had a 90's digital with all the trimmings and couldn't find a working one on ebay to canabalise for spares you're likely screwed.
Your two paragraphs kinda illustrate what has very much changed in the world of watches. Up until the Swiss revival of mechanical, watches were more how you describe them in your first paragraph. They were jewellery yes, but had a distinct practical function, innovations like water resistence, auto winding, chronos, alarms, even changing styles plugged into that 'modern'. Later innovations like electronic and quartz really plugged into the we're moving into the future mindset of the buyers. Very few would have wanted to hark back to the old unless it was a treasured watch of a family member, or they were older themselves and bought what they knew. Look how quickly quartz took over and when digitals came out which were as modern tech as you can get people dropped the old en masse.
Now for the vast majority of people in this 'postmodern' world they still buy modern tech, if they wear a watch at all. Quartz is still king and as Apple shows smartwatches outsell everything the Swiss produce and that's just one smartwatch from one brand. Add in smartwatches from other brands, fitbits and the like and wrist furniture is still very much modernist. The Swiss mechanical revival itself got a massive shove in investment from the equally massive sales of cheap, plastic, very modish and modern, quartz Swatches.
Then you have the enthusiasts. While you certainly had strong sales of 'good watches', mechanical and quartz, usually one off lifetime purchases, wedding, birthday pressies and the like(TAG Heuer being king in that bracket for a time), the enthusiasts were a tiny niche of weirdos at the fringes. It's really only grown beyond that niche in the last decade or so. Hodinkee which drove much of it in the mainstream is only going since 2008 and only really started to gain traction in the last ten years. John Mayer's talking watches was a breakout piece for them and that's from 2013.
In the end the vast majority of people outside of investors and actual enthusiasts want to buy the Taycan.
Good point..here I am in mondello in my 911. 😜
And do you still have that, or what do you have now, Fitz? 😂
Too uncomfortable for a every day car...although was a good jammer, sold i (for more than I paid for it...the rolex of cars).....have driven a good few air cooled porsche and honestly I dont get it. I would have a late 70's 911SC or a targa just for the look but as a driving machine they dont hold up well today in my humble opinion. They look cool I see the appeal there, and you get your "purest" badge. But for driving...not so much.
came from this....V10 M5 (The omega of cars resale value wise) and a V8 6 series (piece of wallowy crap)
But after the Porsche I had the three of these at the same time
E30 I restored myself...(sold it an should not have, its was a beauty and like she rolled off the factory floor in the end). Pic of what I spend every weekend doing for 6 months.....
Straight 6 M4 daily
Here I am with my best friend doing some drag racing
And a e46 straight 6 M3 for a track car (again restored by me, pic of it on my cousins lift doing some jobs, think I replaced the brakes that day and stripped a bolt on the carrier, took me 5 hours retrieve it)
Oh and I ran a detailing forum/website for a while with a couple of other fellows, but the business failed acrimoniously between the lads and I was left holding the baby, still find cleaning a car to be one of the most therapeutic things a man can do. Clears the mind. Few other in the back catalogue...Rx8, few mazdas, about 3 other beemers.
But I still do enjoy learning what a true enthusiast would buy......😜
I had a Pebble Steele smart watch. Great watch and enjoyed it....until they sold out to Fitibit who after a short time killed all the servers for Pebble. There are some ad-hoc ways to get the watch to work, but the community died off.
Decided to go back to normal watch, bought a Seiko SNJ025 from a boardies and havent looked back.
I had a series 3 Apple watch for a while, but sold it on. I rarely if ever wore it tbh. I'm trying to buy a very early first series example from a guy I know. He's resisting. 😁 Mainly because it's the first of that line, so as a bit of a whim and I'd likely only use it as a watch.
I'd actually like to have a no display activity tracker to wear on my right wrist while I wear a proper watch on the left.
Whoop doesn't have a screen, it's pretty pricey though with their subscription model. €30 a month or €18 if you pay for 18 months up front.
Considering my own options have a Fitbit Inspire that I wear on my right wrist more than 2 years now and considering replacing it. I hardly ever look at the screen so a band and notifications on phone would be enough for me. Fitbit Lux is a little smaller and I'm already on the fitbit ecosystem. Sort of tempted to switch to a Garmin Vivosmart 4 as I already use a Garmin Edge for cycling and a 910xt for running and swimming so would be good to have all that data in one location as well as my daily activity and sleep tracking.
Ouraring looks interesting, bit pricey though. I'd say in another generation or two a ring based device could a great option.
My first watch book has arrived, had a little look through and was pleased to see there's a doxa ,accutron and some Casios in it. It's a coffee table type book, short story from an owner of an iconic watch. No Seiko in though, or Nina Rindts Heuer.
lads am having a senior moment here. if buying a s\h watch from the uk is it vat i have to pay plus admin charges? and is there a way of using ebay to translate descriotions etc>
thanks Roy
Yeah 23% vat plus admin fee which is small enough . Vat is the killer .
for eBay there’s browser plug ins for translation or copy the text and paste it into Google translate
thqnks S
These are among the worst photos of all time. And he tried to make them look professional
https://www.adverts.ie/25890810
a graduate from the unkle school of photography
With a doctorate from mine.
At least I don't have any pretensions 😂
Speaking of Unk! I saw this and thought of you, how lovely it'd look on your wrist and the shivers it'd send down the spine of the strap mafia here 😜🤣🤣
That looks like the exact stingray strap I have. Made in Vietnam and all!
Thanks for reminding me. Should put it on a Rolex and take some pics for all you fans of stingray out there 😁
I know it's a millimetre too narrow for the lugs but let's just say it's Bond's style 😂
You know, I don't hate that 😅
It’s alright Frank, I hate it enough for us both :D
Strap is also an inch short for your wrist given how tight it is!
Just when I think the forum is settled down to watch talk, and good taste and positivity is abounding, you lads keep bringing the stingray back out.
I closed it a bit quick to get the pic in before dusk. There was another hole on the strap but damn those Asians have tiny wrists 🤣
That explains it! I'm Asian. 🤗 Oh wait, I can't be. I'm far too prone to indolence. 😁
Though we all tended to have smaller wrists in years gone by. Over the years I've collected vintage straps and bracelets in keeping with the era of some of the watches I have(there is no end to this madness) and the stuff of the earlier part of the last century is definitely shorter. If I buy a new strap that's sized average I'm either on the last hole or need to make a new one, with stuff from 80 years plus ago I've got at least three or four adjustment holes to go.
I was reading something years ago where I think it was Harrods who have sizing sales going back over a century and people were much smaller of frame on average, not so much shorter, though we were generally shorter, but just smaller of frame. We've gotten bigger. I don't mean fatter either, just bigger overall. Even our shapes show a trend. There were apparently more women with 'hourglass' figures on average in the past. Diet it seems is the thing. And a lack of childhood illnesses with it. Back in the medieval the rich like the aristocracy and clergy were almost a different species to the poor. They were taller and broader and tended to live longer too. Diet again seem to play a major part.
It's amazing how drastically the human body has changed size wise in such a short period of time (as in 2 generations). As part of another hobby I collect some military and police related items. It never ceases to amaze me that a lot of the uniform items worn by fully grown men 80 to 90 years ago would barely fit a child entering their teens these days. Nowhere is this more obvious than with headgear. The size of the human skull seems to have drastically expanded since my grandparents time.
Nice money if you can get it
