Who Watches the Watchmen (Our Chit Chat Thread)

I did and I have a bit more in rounds that's in profit currently. Now the main reason I made any profit at all is that since July silver VAT treatment changed. On a price per ounce basis, silver is cheaper now than when I bought but the VAT bump on "new" means my price was below new delivered and still gave me a profit.

I have some rounds that are easier to manage and sell out of than the 1kg bars but any money I put into silver or metals will be via SLV or miner ETFs. It's nice to have a bit of precious metal exposure but liquidity in Ireland for physical metal is sparse.

Should I read that as “ I got lucky “ or did you with prior knowledge foresee / expect the vat change ?

The better half is starting her chemo next Tuesday and a lot of this week has been taken up with wig shopping.

We "knew" that with chemo she would lose her hair. That said knowing it and having it confirmed are 2 very different things. We were in with the Chemo nurse specialist and discussing the treatment. She made it clear that there was a better than 90% chance that even with a cool cap, that hair loss would start 10-15 days after 1st treatment.

It's the 1st time in everything that's happened through diagnosis and treatment to date that she cried. Not from vanity but from agency being taken away by cancer. I'm very much a "find it, fix it" lad when it comes to problems, cancer really takes that out of your hands.

Anyway, to come back to this being somewhat watch related 😉 as we were wig shopping the Mrs was being quoted prices from €600 to €2k for hairpieces and being a little conservative in what she wanted to spend versus what she really wanted.

Told her not to worry about what it costs for a few reasons.

1. I've spent a lot more than that on single watches.

2. It's for her and her peace of mind, self image and confidence through the shítty times to come!

3. It really isn't costing anything anyway as we have full cover for wigs on LAYA so go wild 😉

In conclusion, Fúck Cancer 😉

Fúck Cancer is right. The day will come that we can at least keep it at bay and people won't die from it any more. I hope we all live to see that day. My sister is doing ok, recovering slowly but steadily and my best mate is getting better very slowly after a bone marrow transplant which is one of the most severe intrusions a human being can take, if they are very lucky to survive it. Many of my friends and family were not so lucky.

Best wishes for you and the missus.

Best of luck to both of you my sister in law went through the same thing 3 years ago and is flying now🤞

Was super impressed with a friend's San Martin the other day.. he reckons it's super accurate as well 39mm for 250 euro?

I’ve no time for San Martin at all .A blatant cheap knock off .

They have a BB pro GMT homage that IMHO is only branding away from being a fake.

Homage is perfectly fine, it's a great way to get into watches and TBF? Some of the modern homages are far better watches than their inspiration. The design language for watches is of course limited and there are only so many ways to skin a cat. I do think the San Martin is overpriced for what it is. That's something that runs for a lot of their range IMO they have had a steady rise in retail that doesn't reflect their value Vs other Chinese brands.

No Chinese mechanical watch can match the time keeping of a $7 FW-91 😂

(No Swiss or German or any other one either of course - personally I don't really care all that much how good the time keeping is)

I don't know how you can be in to watches and not care about time keeping. I like to think watch collecting is a broad church, so we're bound to have different opinions.

The John Harrison story should be enough to intrigue most collectors. Accuracy in a watch, particularly mechanical does not come easy, the design effort took hundreds of years of slow learning. The material science,build quality in both the watches and the machines that make them was a huge challenge to develope. All that manifests in features of the watch like reliability and accuracy.

For me the primary function of a watch is to track time, how well it does that is important. How long it is capable of holding it's accuracy is also of interest.

I do get that a watch, particularly a mechanical that you wear for 2 or 3 days and rotate to another watch, can gain or lose a minute or two and you won't notice, you'll reset the next time you put it on.

A quartz for me has more stringent requirements, as you don't have to reset next time you put it on. Just checked mine, getting +0.3 a day from a 42 year old crystal. It was designed to do that when new in 1980, and still does which is the bit that impresses me.

It was a 1k watch that needed regulating (or servicing).

Had it back with Seiko twice and didn't improve a whole lot.

I wasn’t aware of that. Not sure that’s any improvement.

Talking about the accuracy of San Martins or 20 euro seiko movements is akin to talking about the MPG of an opel corsa. YMMV of course

You could try John Donohue at

He services quartz and omega. I haven't used himself yet but I'ld would try him first for a vintage quartz.